Booked for questioning Uttar Pradesh's COVID-19 policy, ex-UP bureaucrat says ready to go to jail

Booked for questioning the COVID-19 policy of Uttar Pradesh government, former IAS officer Surya Pratap Singh has reiterated his claim that the district magistrates were 'admonished' by a top state bureaucrat for increasing the number of coronavirus tests and said that he was ready to go to jail.

Singh, who had opted for VRS (voluntary retirement) in 2016, had been booked by the police for spreading 'misleading' and 'mischievous' information, which could ''create fear'' in the minds of the people. He has been charged under the IT Act, Disaster Management Act and Epidemic Act.

Singh had tweeted that UP's COVID-19 policy appeared to be ''No tests, No Corona'' and wondered if the low number of coronavirus positive cases in the state were due to less number of tests.

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He had claimed that at a meeting, the state chief secretary had 'admonished' some district magistrates for increasing the number of coronavirus tests.

''Why are you (DMs) going so fast....why are you shouting tests-tests?...do you expect a prize,'' Singh quoted the chief secretary as having told the DMs.

Singh, who, as the then special secretary of former UP chief minister Veer Bahadur Singh, had been a witness to the opening of the lock of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in 1986, was considered to be an outspoken official.

He had taken on the then Akhilesh Yadav government in the state in 2015 on different issues.

''The chief secretary has not denied my remarks...if it is correct the it means that the officials are running away from their duty to please their political masters,'' Singh, who was transferred 54 times in his 25 year service, said.

''UP accounts for 21 per cent population of the country but the number of coronavirus positive people is only around three per cent...have they developed a vaccine or some special potion?'' he asked.