IRS officer who sought Nirmala Sitharaman’s dismissal placed under suspension

Chennai: A day before his retirement, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) official from Tamil Nadu was placed under suspension by the Union Ministry of Finance which also initiated disciplinary proceedings on him, weeks after he demanded the resignation of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for “reducing” the Enforcement Directorate into “BJP policy ED.”

In a notice issued on Tuesday, the ministry said B Balamurugan, Deputy Commissioner of GST and Central Excise, Chennai (North), has been placed under suspension with immediate effect and asked not to leave the headquarters without obtaining permission of the competent authority.

However, the order said Balamurugan will be entitled to receive subsistence allowance. The suspension order comes four weeks after the officer dashed off a letter to President Draupadi Murmu seeking Nirmala Sitharaman’s “dismissal.”

The officer was set to retire on January 31 after the department failed to process his request for a Voluntary Retirement from Service (VRS).

He sought Nirmala Sitharaman’s resignation after two farmers from Salem received a notice from the ED under Money Laundering Act as they had a case registered against them under Wildlife (Protection) Act in 2017 for erecting an illegal electric fence that led to the death of two Indian bison. After an uproar, the ED dropped the case against the farmers.

Balamurugan, who was in the news in 2020 when he alleged that Hindi was being “imposed” on him by his colleagues, had also raised doubts over former chief minister J Jayalalithaa's death.

“The incident shows how the Enforcement Directorate has become an extended arm of BJP. In fact the Finance Minister Mrs Nirmala Sitaraman, after taking over has successfully converted the enforcement directorate into BJP policy Enforcement Directorate,” he had alleged.

The controversy came close on the heels of a tug of war between the Tamil Nadu government and the ED after the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-corruption (DVAC) arrested an ED officer for receiving a bribe of Rs 20 lakh from a government doctor. The arrest and subsequent raid by the DVAC in the ED’s sub-zonal office in Madurai triggered a slew of complaints from either side.