A senior IAS officer in Madhya Pradesh has been transferred allegedly for a post he put up on Facebook praising Jawaharlal Nehru while being subtly sceptical of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The post, written a week ago, went viral on the social networking website and is believed to have led to Ajay Singh Gangwar's demotion from being the Barwani district collector to the deputy secretary in the Bhopal Secretariat, reported PTI.
"Let me know the mistakes that Nehru should not have committed...Is it his mistake that he prevented all of us from becoming Hindu Talibani Rashtra in 1947? Is it his mistake to open IIT, ISRO, BARC, IISB, IIM, BHEL steel plant, dams, thermal power? Is it his mistake that he honoured Sarabhai, Homi Jehangir in place of intellectuals like Asaram and Ramdev?" read the Facebook post written in Hindi. He has taken down the post now.
Saffron party leader Vishwas Sarang said that the bureaucrat has violated a code of conduct by posting such sentiments on Facebook. "If in the name of freedom of speech, we will insult the system, that is wrong," Sarang said, according to NDTV. The opposition Congress condemned the move and said that such decisions demonstrate intolerance. "It is condemnable that a statesman like Nehru is spoken of and the person is demoted. This creates fear," Congress leader Meem Afzal said.
"The state government has transferred Barwani Collector Gangwar as Deputy Secretary in the Mantralaya in Bhopal," the news agency reported, quoting a state Public Relation Department official. The official, however, did not mention anything about the Facebook post.
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