StatesJammu & Kashmir
J&K orders inquiry after IAS secretary is filmed berating a junior officer
A video of Labour Secretary Kumar Rajeev Ranjan shouting down a JKAS officer at a review meeting has united Omar Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, and revived the row over who controls the bureaucracy.
Key points
- An inquiry officer has been given 15 days to report on Kumar Rajeev Ranjan's conduct towards Beenish Wani.
- Omar Abdullah told the Chief Secretary to ensure no retaliatory action against the junior officer.
- Farooq Abdullah said the IAS officer should be expelled from Jammu and Kashmir.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has ordered an inquiry into a senior IAS officer who was caught on video shouting down a junior woman officer at a review meeting, in an episode that has drawn criticism from the National Conference, the PDP and the Congress alike.
The officer, Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, is Administrative Secretary of the Labour and Employment Department. The video, which spread on social media, shows him cutting off Beenish Wani, a Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service (JKAS) officer and Assistant Director of Employment in Ganderbal, during a meeting this week on the Mission YUVA programme.
What the video shows
Wani raised a concern about coordination with the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. Ranjan objected that the mission was only a supporting agency, and when she tried to explain her department’s targets he cut in: “Shut up! Shut up! Don’t explain.” She asked to finish her sentence. He then allegedly used an abusive word. When she objected, he replied: “I am your boss.”
Mandeep Kaur, a 2004-batch IAS officer and Commissioner-Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department, has been named inquiry officer and has 15 days to report, according to an official order. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha was reported to have asked Chief Secretary Atul Dulloo for a report. Ranjan was said to have sought Wani’s suspension, but no such order has been issued. He has not commented in public.
Omar points to the limits of his office
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah directed Dulloo to make sure no retaliatory action is taken against Wani. In a post on X, he said the conduct was “not in keeping with the standards expected of a senior IAS officer”, and noted that control over IAS officers in the Union Territory rests with the Lieutenant Governor’s office. Had Jammu and Kashmir been a state, he said, the officer would have been attached to the General Administration Department pending an inquiry.
His father, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah, went further. “He should be expelled from Jammu and Kashmir,” he said on Friday. “The language he used was completely wrong; he should be reprimanded.” He said he was “deeply pained and ashamed” when he saw the video, and that the shouting of “get out, get out” was “entirely wrong”.
“I would have put him right back on the plane and sent him away,” the former chief minister said of what he would have done when the region was a state, tying the episode to the 2019 reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories.
Opposition joins in
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti wrote on X that “such erratic and disdainful conduct cannot be tolerated”, and urged Omar to take the matter up with the Centre. J&K Congress president Tariq Karra wrote to the Lieutenant Governor seeking a fair, time-bound inquiry that examines the full recording, and protection for Wani against victimisation.
The JKAS officers’ body condemned what it called the public humiliation of a colleague and asked for an impartial inquiry.