IAS Officer Transferred For 9th Time, Receives Notice For Sharing The News With 4 Colleagues

A senior woman official of the General Administration Department said that Jangid was served notice on Wednesday and has been asked to reply within seven days. 

Bhopal: An officer of Indian Administrative Services (IAS) was served with a show-cause notice on grounds of sharing the audio recording of his conversation with his colleagues on social media expressing annoyance over his transfer order. 

The IAS officer named Lokesh Kumar Jangid, in May, was transferred as mission director of Bhopal-based Rajya Siksha Kendra. Prior to this, he was serving as additional collector of Barwani district in Madhya Pradesh. 

Notably, this was Jangid's ninth transfer in a span of 54 months. 

According to one of his colleagues, who is a senior woman official of the General Administration Department, Jangid was served notice on Wednesday and has been asked to reply within seven days. 

"The matter pertains to a conversation he had with me. My job is to telephone them (officers) to let them know that they have been transferred. But he tapped the conversation, which amounted to invasion into my privacy...His act was unbecoming of a government officer," she said. 

While speaking to news agency PTI, the 35-year-old IAS officer accepted that he shared with his four IAS colleagues the recorded conversation of 30-odd seconds between him and Mukherjee over his transfer.

"I shared this audio with four of my IAS colleagues on personal chats. It was done after the (transfer) order was issued in writing by the GAD and updated in the department's website. I had shared it in good faith and in personal capacity when they asked me about the reason for my sudden transfer...I told them that I was not informed about the reason. So I shared the audio with them saying this is what the GAD principal secretary told me...I did not share it in any group," Jangid said.

"But I think that it is not a question of breach of any conduct rules, because the information is neither of confidential nature nor of personal nature. It does not violate her (Mukherjee's) privacy. Even the Right to Information Act states that government officials should proactively disclose the information which ought to be in the public domain," he added.

Jangid also informed that on June 11, he had written to the state government for inter-cadre deputation to Maharashtra for three years citing that his 87-year-old grandfather is a diabetic, who is also suffering from Parkinson's disease.

He also said that besides all other reasons, he wants to take care of his widowed mother. Jangid is a 2014-batch IAS officer, who hails from Parbhani district of Maharashtra.