The first floor flat at the Life Insurance Corporation of India’s (LIC) residential building in Gurgaon’s Sector 14 is modest. P.J. Thomas lives here because his wife is an LIC official. Dressed in a bush shirt and lungi, the former chief vigilance commissioner ushers me into his drawing room and to a sofa, and sits on another sofa. If he’s meeting me, it’s because his former boss in Kerala put in a word.

He is wary of interviews and doesn’t let me tape-record this one, though he permits me to take detailed notes. Thomas now spends his time reading books, watching IPL matches (“I’ve become crazy about them,” he says) and spending time with his family.

He tells me that his father was a schoolteacher who shifted from Alappuzha to Thiruvananthapuram to join the Kerala government and rose to become an additional secretary. His mother retired as secretary of the state motor vehicles department. He was one of six siblings, the most prominent of them being older brother Johny Joseph, the former Maharashtra chief secretary who’s now the state’s Upa Lokayukta.

Says an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) batchmate of Johny Joseph who visited their home: “It was a very middleclass family. They lived simply.” Thomas studied at schools and colleges in Thiruvananthapuram, acquiring a masters degree in physics and later in economics. He later studied public administration in Paris, an outcome of a study programme for bureaucrats initiated by P. Chidambaram when he was minister of state for personnel. Johny Joseph describes Thomas as having been mischievous when young and then suddenly becoming serious and reserved. Thomas, of course, doesn’t recall this, but several colleagues and ministers say he was very reserved, with few public relations skills. But today he is welcoming, convivial and laughs a lot.

Like many others of that era, both brothers joined the IAS, Johny in 1972 and Thomas a year later. Few other job options existed at that time. Thomas says he’d have joined an Indian Institute of Technology had he passed out of school in the 1980s and opted for a different career.

Once in the IAS, he slowly climbed the ladder. He is credited with having acquired land for the Kochi special economic zone, when he was collector at Ernakulam in the early 1980s, without any complaints having been filed against him. During his eight years as Kerala’s chief electoral officer from 1991, Thomas linked all the constituencies via computers to Thiruvananthapuram so that the electoral results were almost instantaneously available after voting. He was also credited with putting photographs on electoral rolls. “This was done in 2003 in Kerala for the first time,” confirms Thomas.

He was eventually appointed chief secretary of Kerala by LDF chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan in September 2007 — ironic, because, as former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac puts it, Achuthanandan had vigorously pursued the palmolein case. On a television channel, CPM politician Sitaram Yechury said that Thomas was appointed chief secretary only because the state’s IAS officers association had protested at his not being appointed to the post. But, snorts current Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, “What protest? It is the government’s discretion to appoint the chief secretary, the director general of police, etc. The government appointed P.J. Thomas because he was a good officer.”

Thomas moved to New Delhi in January 2009, because his wife had earlier been transferred there from Chennai as executive director, training, at the LIC. Visiting his family in Delhi from Thiruvananthapuram would have been expensive.

During the course of a two- hour interview on that May evening, Thomas spoke on civil servants (he thinks most are “apologetic”, and lack the courage to get things done for fear of upsetting the applecart) and the controversies that have dogged him. Excerpts from his first interview to the media in recent years:

Q. How has the whole controversy affected you? Have you become more religious? Depressed?

A. I was worried. A case always gives you tension. I was not depressed. I was to superannuate on January 31, 2011. Mentally, you are always prepared for that. Religious? I used to go to church every day, right from my college days. I’m a Catholic. After coming here too, I do that. So I’ve never been more religious or less religious. I go to Mass every day. That’s all.

Q. In hindsight, do you regret having accepted the CVC’s post? Was that a mistake?

A. I don’t think it was a mistake. I was the senior-most secretary.

Q. Why, in your opinion, did Opposition leader Sushma Swaraj oppose your candidacy for the CVC’s post?

A. She never liked Kerala. The BJP has never made it there. So BJP stalwarts don’t like Kerala.

Q. After the controversy over the CVC’s post began, why didn’t you resign?

A. Forget it (declines to discuss the matter).

Q. Do you regret having been an honest bureaucrat?

A. It’s a question of one’s conscience. My conscience doesn’t permit me to make money.

Q. What can a bureaucrat do to clear his name, other than approaching the Supreme Court?

A. No bureaucrat ever clears his name. He can’t afford a legal battle. K.K. Venugopal agreed to appear pro bono for me because he knew I was an honest man. He didn’t charge fees, he took only the expenses incurred. He said, ‘I know you don’t have money’.

The judges asked my counsel why I hadn’t sought a discharge from the case earlier. I said, I had no money.

Q. You’ve been pilloried in the media. Was this unpleasant?

A. Initially it was. Then you get used to it.

Q. Let me turn to the palmolein case. Who telephoned you first when you were food and civil supplies secretary in Kerala?

A. The Cabinet decision to import palmolein was taken on November 27, 1991. Additional chief secretary Zacharia Mathew received the Cabinet note first and then gave it to me. I initialled it, sent the file to the additional secretary, food and civil supplies department, and it then went to the under secretary who drafted a three-page Government Order and sent it to me. I said, please send me a more succinct order. A one-and-a-half page order came to me on 2/12/91. I approved it.

Q. The LDF says that you as food and civil supplies secretary erred on two counts — one, you issued a Government Order without consulting the finance department. Two, you allowed an agreement to be signed without a government order. Please comment.

A. The file came with the signature of the finance minister. I assumed that the finance minister had seen it. If the finance minister signs on it, it’s accepted.

Secondly, the agreement was entered into by the Kerala State Civil Supplies Corporation (KSCSC). So neither the secretary (food) nor others were party to it. The deal was not done through the government. Zacharia Mathew telephoned the managing director of the KSCSC (Jiji Thomson) and he signed a suppliers’ agreement. I wasn’t aware of this. Per se, it didn’t look very serious.

If Jiji had put the price on that day, nothing would have happened. The price was going up. If prices had declined, the price Kerala imported palmolein for would have been lower than Tamil Nadu’s. West Bengal imported palmolein at a higher price than Kerala got it for.

Q. You were asked to become an approver in the case. By whom?

A. I was asked to become an approver in 1997 or so, by the vigilance investigative officers. They wanted me to go to a magistrate and say, (then chief minister) Karunakaran called me and told me to issue an order. That was a lie — he had not done that. If I made a statement like that, the Cabinet could have taken action against me for lying. I could have been suspended.

Q. What will happen now in the palmolein import case? I don’t think the case will be withdrawn.

A. The state government has accused me of criminal conspiracy under Section 120 B of the IPC. But Section 120 B by itself cannot stand. It has to be accompanied by Section 13(1) D of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The draft chargesheet was filed under Section 13(1) D. This required the Government of India’s permission, which was not given.

The maximum punishment under Section 120 B is one year’s imprisonment. This doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll fight it.

Q. Do you feel that justice has been denied to you?

A. Whenever there is an issue between a politician and a bureaucrat, the politician will drop the bureaucrat. That’s the case all over the world.

(Then Kerala chief minister) A.K. Antony refused to act on it (withdrawing the case) because of the fight with Karunakaran. Zacharia Mathew and I had to appear in court.

When Oommen Chandy was chief minister, Jiji (who’s also accused in the palmolein import case) and I met him separately and asked him to withdraw the case against us. He said, ‘No, it can’t be withdrawn only against you because Karunakaran too is involved. We’ll withdraw the case in toto.’ This would require the Supreme Court’s permission because Karunakaran had got a stay from the Supreme Court. Since the Supreme Court’s permission was required, we’d have to go through the advocate general. Finally, a petition to withdraw the case was filed in July 2005. The Supreme Court passed an order on April 20, 2006, saying we’re permitted to file an application to withdraw the case in (the vigilance) court in Thiruvananthapuram. But by then, elections had been announced, and the model code of conduct was in place.

Q. What happened when you were department of telecommunications (DoT) secretary under A. Raja? You weren’t involved in the 2G licences, but did you have problems with Raja? Did you ever submit a dissenting note on any matter to the Cabinet secretary?

A. I was involved only in the 3G auctions. My relationship with Raja was that between a minister and a secretary. He never asked me to do any hanky panky. I disagreed with him on many things. On some things he overruled me. For example, on a BSNL tender, Raja wrote, ‘don’t send communication from the DoT to BSNL to cancel the tender’. I talked to him, he disagreed. There was no occasion to write to the Cabinet secretary.

Q. You were chief secretary of Kerala in 2007 and 2008. Why did you move to Delhi?

A. Because of my wife. From 2003, she was in Chennai. She was transferred to Delhi in 2005. Going to Chennai from Thiruvananthapuram was not difficult — there’s an overnight train. But flights to Delhi are expensive. She’s working till September 2012. Then we’ll wind up and go to Thiruvananthapuram. I get a pension of Rs 50,000 a month. That’s not much in Delhi but in Thiruvananthapuram it is.

I can’t work for a year under government rules. After a year, it depends on my health. My health is fine. So...