Bengaluru: “When an institution fails, the individual has to stand up. As an individual I had to bring about a change and I stood by this cause by resigning,” said former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Kannan Gopinathan, who quit on August 21 in protest over the Abrogation of article 370 of the Constitution and the subsequent clampdown on Jammu and Kashmir.
Invited to address the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in the city on Friday, he explained the reasons for his controversial decision, saying he had felt for some time that people were being suffocated due to the loss of their fundamental rights during his posting in Dadra and Nagar Haveli
“Protesting is a fundamental right under the Constitution as long as it is not violent. But at my workplace, if there was a protest anywhere it was seen as a failure of the administration. . We are always taking decisions assuming that we know better than the people. But they have a fundamental right to react or express their opinion,” he emphasised, adding, “This happened all the time and I argued for a while. On August 5 I was given additional charge of smart cities with the advice that I was not to talk about fundamental rights. I was told that my job was to understand what the ‘political will’ was and find a way within the legal frame work to execute it,”
The former IAS officer lamented that there was no opportunity for discussion and what mattered was only the will of the political masters. “Even if it was illegal , bureaucrats were asked to blindly follow the diktats of their political bosses. I used to refuse to do this. Then I was lectured saying it was a political decision. And as the law allowed me to do it, I had to for political reasons,” he added.
Mr Gopinathan, who was the secretary (power), in the Union Territories of Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli resigned on August 21, stirring a hot debate all over the country and becoming a role model to many civil service officers.
