Controversial bureaucrat Arun Kumar set to head SWRRA
The State Government has cleared the decks for rewarding the bureaucrat involved in the controversial transfer of State land to the Amarnath shrine board in 2008 and accused of involvement in the solar lights scam of 2009.
According to sources, the controversial bureaucrat, Arun Kumar, presently Director General of the Jammu and Kashmir Institute of Management and Public Administration and Rural Development (IMPARD), a post equivalent in status to the IAS cadre post of Chief Secretary for the period held by him, is set to be elevated by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition government.
The sources said Kumar, who is nearing his superannuation, is likely to be rewarded with a five-year term in office, as the government is set to make him the head of the now headless State Water Resources Regulatory Authority (SWRRA).
As the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Amarnath shrine board, Kumar was the main figure in securing 800 kanal of State’s forest land to the shrine board that led to 2008 summer uprising culminating in over 65 civilian killings by Police, paramilitary forces and Army.
Interestingly, Qazi Muhammad Afzal, a minister of PDP that now heads the coalition government in the State, had ordered the transfer of the land becoming the basic cause of the land row ending Ghulam Nabi Azad led Congress-PDP government prematurely.
At that time, PDP had pulled support from Azad and sought cancellation of land diversion to Amarnath shrine board.
The government at that time had also recalled Kumar, who was then the Principal Secretary to the Governor S K Sinha besides being the CEO of the Amarnath shrine board, from his assignment at the Raj Bhavan and attached him to the General Administration Department (GAD) after his controversial statement about the allotment of forest land to the shrine authorities.
Kumar had triggered a controversy when he stated that the Amarnath shrine board would construct concrete structures on the land allotted to it by the State government.
The government had maintained the allotment was purely temporary and the Amarnath shrine board could not build concrete structures over it.
However, back in government, PDP-led government now seems to have made peace with Kumar and is in fact going a step further by rewarding him by making him the SWRRA head.
Kumar also has a tainted past and during his tenure as the Commissioner Secretary, Science and Technology, he was accused of involvement in a solar light scam of 2009.
An FIR into the case was also registered against him in April 2015.
Talking to us, Commissioner Secretary GAD, Gazanfar Hussain said he was not in knowhow of such orders so far.
The government spokesman Naeem Akhtar did not respond to calls from us.
