The cabinet secretary has intervened to rehabilitate a senior IAS official who the Central Vigilance Commission described as honest and efficient from the the department of telecommunications, where he was sidelined by the controversial minister A Raja.
JS Deepak, joint secretary in the DoT who had to face the wrath of Raja for refusing to be obsequious to him on the infamous 93-million line tender of BSNL, has been transferred to the department of commerce.
More recently, it was Deepak who oversaw the auction of 3G and BWA spectrum, which was a huge success.
Raja had taken all major work away from Deepak and even dropped him from the BSNL board as government nominee. The official found help from the CVC, which based on his dissent note, had investigated the irregularities in the tender and asked that it be scrapped.
CVC wrote to cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar: ?Nominee director of the government of India on the BSNL board objected to the award of the tender on grounds of exorbitant prices and order of a large quantity without following CVC guidelines. The matter was examined and the stand vindicated. BSNL was advised that it shouldn?t pursue the tender. It should be ensured that the officer should not face harassment due to the action taken by him on the matter.? Sources said that based on the CVC?s advice and after assessing that the officer was not being utilised fully in the DoT, the cabinet secretary decided to move him to commerce.
DoT secretary PJ Thomas had even sought an explanation from Deepak for opposing the tender. Interestingly, the secretary had done this when he himself as part of the Sam Pitroda committee had recommended the scrapping of the tender.
Earlier, Raja had transferred another official, PK Mittal of the Indian Telecommunications Service, who had also dissented on the tender award along with Deepak. Mittal was repatriated to his parent firm BSNL.
Deepak who oversaw 3G-BWA auctions also got letters of commendation from the finance secretary and the cabinet secretary. The cabinet secretary noted that ?the notable work done by JS Deepak in the extent, design and smooth conduct of the 3G auction that has resulted in huge revenue (over Rs1 lakh crore) was widely hailed for its transparency and revenue generation. The 3G auction principles and processes should be made applicable to land, oil, gas and radio.?
