A group of former civil servants have claimed that Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has lied to raise doubts on their credibility in Stephen Sackur’s BBC show Hard Talk. They have written a letter to Sackur underlining that Prasad dismissed their open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by falsely asserting that “ninety per cent of the members of this group were those who made a public appeal to vote against Shri Narendra Modi”.
“We came together as a group only in June 2017 to voice our concern against the decline in secular, democratic and liberal values enshrined in the Constitution and the climate of hate and fear which we believed, and still do, had been induced by the ruling establishment,” the former officials wrote.
Read the full letter here:
Dear Mr Sackur,
In your interview with Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Minister for Law and Justice in the ‘Hard Talk’ show telecast on July 17, 2018, you had asked him to respond to the issues raised in the open letter our group of retired civil servants had written to the Prime Minister in April this year. Mr Prasad dismissively responded to your query by questioning our credibility on the ground that ninety per cent of the members of this group were those who, in 2014, had made a public appeal to vote against Shri Narendra Modi.
This is completely false. We came together as a group only in June 2017 to voice our concern against the decline in secular, democratic and liberal values enshrined in the Constitution and the climate of hate and fear which we believed, and still do, had been induced by the ruling establishment. We did not exist as a group until then, so the question of our having made an appeal to influence the 2014 Parliamentary Elections is absurd. We are proud of the fact that as a group we have no political affiliation with any political party whatsoever and as former civil servants who owe our allegiance to the Constitution of India, we take the issue of our political neutrality very seriously. For the Minister to use a lie to raise doubts on our credibility and deflect attention from the issues we raised is contemptible.
We are writing to you to set the record straight and we hope the BBC will give appropriate attention and publicity to our clarification and whenever possible, also give us an opportunity to present our point of view on the issues raised by us in our several open letters.
Anita Agnihotri
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, GoI
Salahuddin Ahmad
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chief Secretary, Rajasthan
V.S. Ailawadi
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chairman, Electricity Regulatory Commission
Gopalan Balagopal
IAS (Retd.)
Former Special Secretary, Govt. of West Bengal
Chandrashekhar Balakrishnan
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Coal, GoI
Pradip Bhattacharya
IAS (Retd.)
Former Additional Chief Secretary, Development & Planning and Administrative Training Institute, Govt. of West Bengal
Meeran C Borwankar
IPS (Retd.)
Former DGP, Bureau of Police Research and Development, GoI
Sundar Burra
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Govt. of Maharashtra
Som Chaturvedi
IRTS (Retd.)
Former Additional Member, Railway Board, GoI
Surjit K. Das
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chief Secretary, Govt. of Uttarakhand
Vibha Puri Das
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, GoI
Nareshwar Dayal
IFS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom
Keshav Desiraju
IAS (Retd.)
Former Health Secretary, GoI
M.G. Devasahayam
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Govt. of Haryana
Sushil Dubey
IFS (Retd.)
Former Ambassador to Sweden
K.P. Fabian
IFS (Retd.)
Former Ambassador to Italy
Ravi Vira Gupta
IAS (Retd.)
Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Vivek Harinarain
IAS (Retd.)
Govt. of Tamil Nadu
Sajjad Hassan
IAS (Retd.)
Former Commissioner (Planning), Govt. of Manipur
Dr. M.A. Ibrahimi
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chief Secretary (rank), Govt. of Bihar
Ajai Kumar
Indian Forest Service (Retd.)
Former Director, Ministry of Agriculture, GoI
Arun Kumar
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chairman, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, GoI
Brijesh Kumar
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Department of Information Technology, GoI
Harsh Mander
IAS (Retd.)
Govt. of Madhya Pradesh
Aditi Mehta
IAS (Retd.)
Former Additional Chief Secretary, Govt. of Rajasthan
Sonalini Mirchandani
IFS (Resigned)
GoI
Sunil Mitra
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Finance, GoI
Deb Mukharji
IFS (Retd.)
Former High Commissioner to Bangladesh and Ambassador to Nepal
Pranab S. Mukhopadhyay
IAS (Retd.)
Former Director, Institute of Port Management, GoI
Nagalswamy
IA&AS (Retd.)
Former Principal Accountant General, Tamil Nadu & Kerala
Amitabha Pande
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Inter-State Council, GoI
Niranjan Pant
IA&AS (Retd.)
Former Deputy Comptroller & Auditor General of India
N.K. Raghupathy
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chairman, Staff Selection Commission, GoI
Julio Ribeiro
IPS (Retd.)
Former Adviser to Governor of Punjab & Ambassador to Romania
Manabendra N. Roy
IAS (Retd.)
Former Additional Chief Secretary, Govt. of West Bengal
Umrao Salodia
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chairman, Rajasthan Road Transport Corporation, Govt. of Rajasthan
Deepak Sanan
IAS (Retd.)
Former Principal Adviser (AR) to Chief Minister, Govt. of Himachal Pradesh
Ardhendu Sen
IAS (Retd.)
Former Chief Secretary, Govt. of West Bengal
Abhijit Sengupta
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Culture, GoI
Aftab Seth
IFS (Retd.)
Former Ambassador to Japan
Raju Sharma
IAS (Retd.)
Former Member, Board of Revenue, Govt. of Uttar Pradesh
Jawhar Sircar
IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Culture, GoI, & CEO, Prasar Bharati
Ramani Venkatesan
IAS (Retd.)
Former Director General, YASHADA, Govt. Of Maharashtra
K. Sujatha Rao IAS (Retd.)
Former Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GoI