To
Shri Rajiv Gauba
Cabinet Secretary
Shri T V Somanathan
OSD (Cabinet Secretariat)
Government of India
Dear S/Shri Gauba and Somanathan,
Let me first convey my good wishes to Shri Somanathan on his being designated as the incoming Cabinet Secretary.
In the office of the Cabinet Secretary, you have the onerous responsibility of rendering advice objectively to the Union Cabinet on implications of each decision taken by it from the point of view of its compliance with the Constitution and its different provisions, especially Parts III (citizen’s fundamental rights) and IV (Directive Principles), in addition to its being in line with different laws which are in force and being in harmony with the larger public interest. I am sure that you have every intention to fulfill that role.
As the senior most civil servant at the helm of affairs, you have the additional responsibility to ensure that the civil services in the country, especially the members of the All India Services (AISs) at the Centre and in the States stand committed to the Constitution and its values and that their morale remains high.
Several decisions taken by the political executive at the Centre in the recent past and the manner in which it seems to have forced important statutory authorities like the Election Commission of India (ECI) into submission, do not inspire adequate public trust in the role of senior civil servants at the Centre.A few days ago, Prof
Jagdeep S. Chhokar and I were forced to appeal to the President of India vide our letter (https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/open-letter-to-president-of-india-regarding-ruling-party-using-its-power-to-influence-elections/) to stop the present government from converting its civil servants into “pracharaks” for promoting a personality cult of individual leadership. In my letter addressed to you more recently (https://countercurrents.org/2024/07/lifting-the-six-decade-old-ban-on-government-employees-taking-part-in-the-activities-of-rss-is-a-retrograde-step/), I expressed my distress at the government lifting the sixty-year old ban on government employees taking part in the activities of RSS, which in effect would help the political executive to force civil servants through coercion and inducements to get politicised.
In the words of Harsh Mander, a former member of the IAS, “allowing bureaucrats to join RSS marks the final burial of India’s ‘steel frame’ “ (
Allowing civil servants to join RSS makes a mockery of the following words of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, when he addressed civil servant trainees on April 21, 1947:
“I would advise you to maintain the utmost impartiality and incorruptibility of administration. A civil servant cannot afford to, and must not, take part in politics. Nor must he involve himself in communal wrangles. To depart from the path of rectitude in either of these respects is to debase public service and to lower its dignity. Similarly, no Service worth the name can claim to exist if it does not have in view the achievement of the highest standard of integrity”
As pointed out by me in my letter (https://countercurrents.org/2024/07/lifting-the-six-decade-old-ban-on-government-employees-taking-part-in-the-activities-of-rss-is-a-retrograde-step/), “With almost all institutions brought to near-total submission, with almost every regulatory authority rendered subservient to the political executive, with investigating and enforcing agencies being weaponized against the opposition and with the Election Commission refusing to invoke its authority against the political executive when required, one perhaps has to hold a magnifying glass to detect the last strands of democracy left untouched by the political executive today. One can only hope that those few institutions which still carry a semblance of independence will survive long enough to resuscitate the failing democracy in India“
It is not just at the Centre that the morale of the civil services is declining fast. Taking cue from the political executive at the Centre, the States’ leaders are also marginalising their respective civil services and bringing down their morale by forcing them to get politicised and act in a manner that hurts the public interest.
To cite the example of Andhra Pradesh (AP), the political parties in power in the State have forced senior civil servants to take sides with them, eroding their ability to be impartial. When there was a change in leadership in the 2024 elections, those officers who were subservient to the previous leadership have since been side-lined, with the present political leadership’s favourites emerging. As reported (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/ips-officers-awaiting-posting-in-andhra-pradesh-told-to-attend-duties-at-dgp-office/article68525324.ece), 16 senior IPS officers of the State, stated to be close to the earlier Chief Minister have been directed to “attend duties at the DGP office at Mangalagiri regularly at 10 a.m The officers were required to sign in the attendance register available in the officers’ waiting room. The officers should also sign in the attendance register before leaving the office without fail“, a direction that should cause anguish to anyone conscious of the role that an AIS officer is expected to play.
AP is among those States that stand in utter contempt of the apex court’s direction in their judgement of October 31, 2013 in WP(C) No. 82/2011 (T S R Subramanian & Others vs Union of India) in which the court observed that, “at present the civil servants are not having stability of tenure, particularly in the State Governments where transfers and postings are made frequently, at the whims and fancies of the executive head for political and other considerations and not in public interest” and therefore directed the States to constitute Civil Services Boards (CSBs) to lay down a well-reasoned transfer policy and empower that Board to secure the State’s compliance with that policy.
Once a civil servant realises that he cannot be disturbed at the whims and fancies of the political executive, he or she is more likely to function transparently and remain accountable to the public. Evidently, neither the political leaders in the earlier governments nor those in the present government in AP want the civil servants to be independent and impartial, as in the case of the political executive at the Centre.
In a Writ Petition presently under adjudication before the Karnataka High Court on Karnataka government’s failure to set up the State’s CSB, the High Court observed that “the conduct in not implementing and acting upon the directions of the Supreme Court and the order of the division bench of this court aforementioned by the state authorities is no less than contumacious and could par take the contempt of the directions of the Apex Court” (https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/hc-raps-state-govt-for-not-constituting-civil-service-board-3157937)
Many States stand in contempt of the directions of the apex court in the above cited T S R Subramanian case. Many States also stand in contempt of the apex court’s directions on reforming police as laid down in Prakash Singh and Others v. Union of India (2006) 8 SCC 1.
In the normal course, if the government at the Centre had any sense of commitment to the Constitution and the will to uphold the spirit of public accountability, it would have by now exercised its lawful authority to secure 100% compliance by the States with the above cited two apex court judgements. The fact that the Centre has adopted a somewhat nonchalant attitude speaks volumes of its own complicity in diminishing the role of the civil services and politicising them, in defiance of the directions of the apex court and in violation of Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s vision.
Once the morale of the civil services stands eroded and the civil servants become subservient to political parties, it will weaken the foundations of our democracy and lead to a chaotic situation that will hurt the interests of the majority of the people in the country.
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A time has come when senior civil servants at the Centre and in the States come out of their self-inflicted sense of helplessness to realise their unique role under the Constitution and the need to reinforce the trust that the public repose in the civil services. Their commitment to the Constitution, especially their allegiance to the Directive Principles that should guide State policy, should override everything else. Failure in that respect will erode the credibility of the civil services and the trust that the public repose in them.
May I call upon you as the head of the civil services to take a lead in this direction and not only fulfil your role as an objective adviser to the Union Cabinet and as the key functionary to implement government’s decisions in compliance with the law of the land but also ensure that your colleagues in the States fulfill a similar role?
Regards,
Yours sincerely,
EAS Sarma
Former Secretary to the Government of India
Visakhapatnam
