Haryana cadre IAS officer resigns, cites 'personal safety on govt duty' as reason

A 2014-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre resigned on Monday, citing ‘personal safety on government duty’ as the reason for it.

The Opposition Congress termed her resignation 'shocking', asking Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar if it was not a "proof of his failure".

Rani Nagar (35) currently held the charge of the director, Archives Department; and the additional director, social justice and empowerment.

Recently, Nagar had posted on her Facebook page that she will resign after the coronavirus lockdown was lifted.

She sent her resignation to state chief secretary Keshni Anand Arora, requesting her to forward it to a competent authority in the Union government.

The letter has been received at the chief secretary's office, an official said.

However, Nagar did not elaborate on what she meant by the reason of her resignation. The officer could not be contacted over the phone.

Nagar has also sent copies of the resignation to the president, prime minister, Haryana governor and the chief minister through e-mail.

“The reason for submitting this resignation is the personal safety on government duty," she said in a letter to the chief secretary.

"I do hereby most humbly submit to you my resignation from the post of Indian Administrative Service with immediate effect, that is effective from May 4, 2020, forenoon," she wrote.

The letter was also posted on her Facebook page. She later left Chandigarh for her hometown Ghaziabad with her sister.

She posted on her Facebook page that she had taken permission to move out of the city.

Commenting on it, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala termed her resignation “a shocking incident”.

Hitting out at the BJP-JJP government in the state, Surjewala said, “A senior woman IAS officer has given her resignation stating that she feels unsafe.”

“If a woman IAS officer resigns on the grounds citing personal safety on government duty as the reason, then who will safe in Haryana. Is this not no confidence in your government, is this not a living proof of your failure,” Surjewala said hitting out at the chief minister.

Nagar had come into limelight in June 2018, when she accused an additional chief secretary-level bureaucrat of harassing her.

The state government had conducted an inquiry into the allegations, but the charges did not hold against the officer, a senior official said on Monday.

In an earlier post on her Facebook page, Nagar, who was living in the UT guest house of Chandigarh since 2018 along with her sister, had claimed that despite numerous complaints against the senior bureaucrat, no action was taken against him.

Nagar had mentioned that last year, she had lodged a complaint against the bureaucrat before a court and claimed there is a constant threat to “our lives" (she and her sister), while requesting her Facebook friends to report the matter to the court, if they go untraceable.

In December 2017, when she was posted as the subdivisional magistrate of Dabawali in Sirsa district, police had lodged a case of tresspass against an unidentified person on her complaint.

Nagar had then posted a video on her Facebook page, alleging that police “failed to initiate a prompt action” on her compliant.