With removal of 3 officers, all’s not well in JDA!

Jaipur: The government is conducting a high-level inquiry into a much talked-about land dispute related to Jodhpur Development Authority (JDA), in which action against the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner has been taken.

Senior IAS officer T Ravikanth, Principal Secretary Medical Education, is being given the responsibility of the inquiry. According to sources in bureaucracy, this is an unusual incident when both the senior officers of an authority have been removed considering them responsible in one case.

JDA Commissioner Navneet Kumar (RAS officer of 1997 batch) was removed and put under APO status by DoP last week. Earlier, on April 19, Deputy Commissioner Ravindra Kumar (RAS officer) was suspended in the same matter.

The dispute over the land of Narayan Dharmarth Samiti in Jodhpur, which is worth crores of rupees, is more than 20 years old.

In the year 2002, Rajat Mishra was the Collector in Jodhpur. He had taken this private land in possession of the government.

However, the Revenue Board set aside the action of the Collector considering it wrong. Since then, this matter is stuck in the courts. Still one side’s appeal is pending in the High Court.

It is said that in the year 2022, the government had approved 90-A of this land. After this, the outgoing Deputy Commissioner Ravindra Kumar issued the lease deed in favour of the account holder in October 2022.

When the fact came to light that the account holder had wrongly obtained the lease deed by giving a false affidavit, Ravindra Kumar cancelled the lease deed on March 31, 2023. It is believed that Ravindra Kumar showed negligence and irresponsibility in the entire proceedings. Along with this, Commissioner Navneet Kumar has also been found guilty of supervisory negligence. Sources said that based on the report of Jodhpur Collector Himanshu Gupta, the DoP has taken action against the two officers. According to experts, all is not well in JDA for some time now.

In the last three years, three commissioners have been removed and put under APO status. On October 18, 2020, Meghraj Singh Ratnu was removed. Then 2017- batch IAS officer Avdhesh Meena was removed on October 17, 2022. Avdhesh remained on this post for just 75 days.

Now the latest case is of senior RAS officer Navneet Kumar, who was put under APO status on April 27. He too could stay on this post only for 6 months.

There is certainly something wrong in JDA that three commissioners have been removed. This thing is considered unusual in the administration.