ASHOK KHEMKA Wins: Centre Discriminated Against India’s Most Transferred IAS Officer, Rules HC
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that the Union of India discriminated against IAS officer Ashok Khemka by denying him an empanelment relaxation freely granted to 20 other officers.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, June 7
In a setback to the Centre, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled in favour of Ashok Khemka, the 1991-batch IAS officer who became a symbol of institutional resistance in Indian bureaucracy, holding that the Union of India discriminated against him by denying an empanelment relaxation it had freely granted to at least 20 other IAS officers in identical circumstances.
A division bench of Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi and Justice Deepak Manchanda, deciding the matter, allowed Khemka’s writ petition and directed that he be treated as empanelled at the level of Additional Secretary/Secretary to the Government of India for the purpose of future assignments — even though he has since retired.
The Discrimination at the Heart of the Case
The case turned on a single eligibility rule: to be empanelled as Additional Secretary or Secretary with the Central Government, an IAS officer must have served on central deputation at the level of Deputy Secretary or above for a minimum of three years. Khemka had not met this threshold, and in 2019, when his batch-mates were empanelled at that level, he was left out.
What made the denial indefensible, the HC found, was that the Centre had routinely waived this very rule for others. North Desk has accessed the court order, which reproduces a list of 20 IAS officers — drawn from DoPT’s own website — who were empanelled as Additional Secretary or Secretary with nil central deputation experience. Among them: officers from Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and other cadres spanning multiple decades.
More damning still: even after Khemka’s claim was rejected in 2021, the Centre on March 7, 2022 granted the same relaxation to J. Radhakrishnan, a 1992-batch Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer who also had zero central deputation experience at the Deputy Secretary level or above.
The Union of India offered no explanation for why Khemka was treated differently. The court noted that these facts went unrebutted.
Court’s Finding: Articles 14 and 16 Violated
The HC held that once the Centre had exercised its power to relax the deputation requirement in favour of similarly situated officers — and continued to do so even after rejecting Ashok Khemka — the failure to extend the same benefit to him, without any differentiating reason, amounted to discrimination violating Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India.
“Since there is no such differentiating fact which has been brought to the notice of the Court between the petitioner and the other IAS Officers who were empanelled in the cadre of Additional Secretary/Secretary with the Government of India by grant of exemption,” the bench observed, the denial caused unconstitutional prejudice to Khemka.
Relief: Limited But Significant
Since Ashok Khemka has already retired, actual empanelment for central deputation is no longer possible. There won’t be any change in pension that he is getting either.
However, the HC directed that for future assignments and post-retirement consideration where Additional Secretary/Secretary empanelment is a preferred or minimum qualification, Khemka shall be treated on equal footing with empanelled officers.
The petitioner’s counsel, Shreenath A. Khemka, had argued that even in retirement, IAS officers are considered for high-level assignments and advisory roles where central empanelment status matters — making the notional empanelment a live and consequential question.
Deputation to Centre
This was a second round of litigation. Ashok Khemka had applied for central deputation in 2000, 2011, 2012 and 2014. In each of the years, he was denied a posting in the Centre. Then this clause of three year central service was applied to deny him consideration for empanelment.
Ashok Khemka enclosed a list of over 50 officers who were empanelled and appointed as Additional Secretary with less than three years’ central service. The High Court ordered consideration. The DOPT declined it on a fresh ground that he had no central service. In the second round, he cited 20 appointments listed in the order with nil central experience. The DOPT failed to rebut it despite several opportunities. Hence the order. This now empanels him as secretary to the Government of India
The Ashok Khemka File: A Career of Transfers and Confrontations
Ashok Khemka is among the most widely recognised IAS officers in India, not for administrative achievement alone but for what his career represents: the cost of refusing to accommodate political and corporate interests within the bureaucracy.
A Haryana cadre officer of the 1991 batch, Ashok Khemka has been transferred over 55 times in his service career — a record in Indian administrative history. His most high-profile act came in 2012, when as Director General of Consolidation of Land Holdings in Haryana, he cancelled the mutation of a land deal involving Robert Vadra and DLF Limited, setting off a political firestorm that would follow him for years.
Ashok Khemka was empanelled as Joint Secretary to the Government of India in 2010 but the step up to Additional Secretary — routinely granted to his batch-mates in 2019 — was blocked on the deputation eligibility ground, a requirement the Centre itself had waived for two dozen other officers across cadres and batches.
The High Court’s finding that this amounted to unconstitutional discrimination is now on the record. But have we heard the last word on this issue? Or will Centre appeal against this order? We shall know soon.
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