Convicted
IAS officer held high posts under different regimes
Tuesday December 07, 2010 06:39:47 PM,
IANS
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Lucknow:
Former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Neera Yadav, who was Tuesday
convicted by a special CBI court and arrested in a corruption
case, enjoyed positions of prominence under different governments.
The retired Indian Administrative Service officer was found guilty
by a Central Bureau of Investigation court in Ghaziabad of
violating rules in allotting an industrial plot in Noida to Flex
Industries Ltd. in 1994-95.
CBI Senior Public Prosecutor S. Islam said two corruption cases
were registered in 1998 against Neera Yadav and the beneficiaries
of out-of-turn allotment of plots.
The cases were registered after the Supreme Court directed the CBI
to file criminal cases on a plea filed by the Noida Entrepreneurs
Association (NEA).
The CBI filed charges in the two cases in 2002.
After the court hearing Tuesday, Neera Yadav was sent to jail.
It was not just Mulayam Singh Yadav, who chose her for the top
slot of state chief secretary in 2005, but also chief ministers of
other parties like Bharatiya Janata Party's Rajnath Singh and
Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati who gave her high posts.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had anointed her with the Noida CEO's position
in his earlier stint as chief minister. In the Congress era until
the eighties, Neera Yadav held key positions including that of the
state's appointment secretary, who handles the postings and
transfers of IAS and state civil service officers.
In 1997, she was voted as one of the "three most corrupt IAS
officers" of the state by the UP IAS Association, but she
continued to enjoy positions of prominence under different
governments.
When she was made appointments secretary, a group of IAS officers
formed an action group and went in a delegation to the then chief
minister Veer Bahadur Singh to complain against victimization of
honest bureaucrats.
She continued to hold key positions with control over ministries
like food, agriculture, industries and education.
Her police officer husband Mahendra Singh Yadav turned to politics
and became a minister in a BJP regime. When Mulayam Singh made her
chief secretary in May 2005, retired IAS officer Dharam Singh
Rawat, who was widely known for his anti-corruption crusade, then
sat on a 'dharna' under the statue of Mahatma Gandhi seeking to
know, "how can you appoint such an IAS officer as chief secretary
when her tainted record is so blatant that she stands
charge-sheeted by an agency no less than CBI for committing gross
irregularities in allotment of land in Noida".
Mulayam Singh Yadav had earlier faced much embarrassment following
the appointment of another controversial officer Akhand Pratap
Singh as chief secretary in 2003. Singh had topped the list of the
"three most corrupt" IAS officers. He was forced to step down
after his appointment was challenged through a PIL filed by a
journalist before the country's apex court.
Neera Yadav was removed as chief secretary by an order of the
Supreme Court in another PIL moved by the same journalist. "It was
the first time in the history of the country that the apex court
ordered removal of a state chief secretary on charges of
corruption," remarked senior IAS officer V.S. Pandey, who had
earlier spearheaded the campaign to identify the "three most
corrupt IAS officers" in the state.
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