Govt stands firm on VAT officer’s appointment
If the L-G were to decide to strictly follow the IAS cadre rules for posting, then we may need to first start with looking for a new principal secretary to the L-G.
NEW DELHI: Refusing to budge in the tug of war over the appointment of the VAT commissioner, the Aam Aadmi Party government has written a letter to lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung backing Ankur Garg’s name.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia has written to Jung rebutting the reasons cited by the L-G secretariat for rejecting the proposal to appoint Garg.
Rejecting the proposal last week, the L-G office had argued that Garg was a ‘junior’ officer for the post. Jung’s office said that the post needs an officer of the level of principal secretary and “there was no precedence of appointing a junior officer as commissioner”.
In his letter, the deputy CM has termed some of the reasons as ‘factually wrong’ while providing a list of many officials who were given assignments in the past, for which they were technically ‘junior’.
The list includes SCL Das (1992 batch, appointed as principal secretary to L-G), Gyanesh Bharti (1998 batch, appointed as transport commissioner), Neeraj Semwal (2003 batch, appointed as excise commissioner) among others.
“If the L-G were to decide to MANISH SISODIA’S LETTER TO NAJEEB JUNG
strictly follow the IAS cadre rules for posting, then we may need to first start with looking for a new principal secretary to L-G… It would be important to note that four of the above transfer orders were issued by Jung himself during the President’s Rule,” Sisodia’s letter said.
Sources said Sisodia has also questioned the concerns raised by the L-G’s office that a senior officer is required to achieve the high revenue target set by the AAP government.
“If the L-G secretariat is genuinely concerned about achieving the revenue target for the current fiscal, then it would not have untimely relieved Vijay Kumar as VAT commissioner without taking the Delhi government into confidence,” Sisodia said in his letter.