Appraisal delay adds to Khemka's woes

His performance report was due for approval on June 30

After a prolonged witch-hunt during the Congress regime, whistleblower senior Haryana cadre bureaucrat Ashok Khemka seems to have little reprieve during the BJP rule in Haryana.

His latest bout with administrative trouble is over his pending annual performance appraisal (APA) that was due for approval on June 30. Khemka is peeved over the unprecedented delay and has expressed his anguish in a letter to Haryana chief secretary DS Dhesi who is reportedly sitting over his file for over a month.

Just when everything appeared at ease for Ashok Khemka, on July 1 this year, he was handed out a charge sheet by the incumbent regime for causing avoidable loss of crores of rupees because of unsold wheat seed stocks of 87,000 quintals.

Khemka, whose troubles began after he cancelled the controversial land deal involving Robert Vadra and reality major DLF in Gurgaon, is now at the receiving end despite the additional chief secretary giving him an ‘outstanding’ rating in his appraisal terming him an extremely upright and a committed officer. In fact, Khemka’s performance appraisal has been pending since May 18 when it was forwarded to the chief secretary.

Khemka has asked the chief secretary not to appraise him since he is “not anymore competent” under the rules as the June 30 cut-off date for appraising him has lapsed.
He has urged the chief secretary to forward it to the minister of the department for appraisal. Khemka is presently the principal secretary of the science and technology department, Haryana.

The charge sheet against Khemka pertains to a three-year-old case until April 2013 during his stint as managing director of Haryana Seeds Development Corporation (HSDC).
Khemka’s appraisal woes reached a peak after he cancelled the Vadra-DLF deal in 2012, before which he had an outstanding rating. Later, he was appraised 5.5 out of 10 points.

He recently topped the Punjab University entrance examination for law, scoring over thousands of other students. The 1991 batch IAS officer has been transferred over 45 times in his career spanning 24 years.