Haryana IAS officer quits, cites ‘personal safety on duty’ as reason

CHANDIGARH: A 2014-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre resigned on Monday, citing ‘personal safety on government duty’ as the reason for it.

The Opposition Congress termed her resignation ‘shocking’, asking chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar if it was not a “proof of his failure”. Rani Nagar, 35, currently posted as director, archives department, sent her resignation to the state chief secretary, requesting to forward it to a competent authority in the Union government.

Nagar said she is also sending copies of the resignation letter to the President, Prime Minister, Haryana governor and the chief minister through e-mail. “The reason for submitting this resignation is the personal safety on government duty,” she said in a letter to the chief secretary.

“I do hereby most humbly submit to you my resignation from the post of Indian Administrative Service with immediate effect, that is effective from May 4, 2020, forenoon,” she wrote.

The letter was also posted on her Facebook page. She later left Chandigarh for her hometown Ghaziabad. Recently, Nagar had posted on her Facebook page that she will resign after the coronavirus lockdown was lifted.

In June 2018, Nagar had accused an additional chief secretary-level bureaucrat of harassing her, a charge denied by the officer. In December 2017, when she was posted as the subdivisional magistrate of Dabawali in Sirsa district, police had lodged a case of tresspass against an unidentified person on her complaint. Nagar had then posted a video on her Facebook page, alleging that police “failed to initiate a prompt action” on her compliant.