Adarsh housing society

Mumbai, Jan. 3: A former IAS officer close to central ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Vilasrao Deshmukh has resigned from the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission, marking the beginning of an administrative clean-up in the wake of the Adarsh housing scandal.

Subhash Lalla, whose mother and daughter own flats in Adarsh in South Mumbai, called on Maharashtra governor K. Sankaranarayanan at Raj Bhavan this morning, and submitted his resignation. “The governor has accepted Lalla’s resignation,” a Raj Bhavan spokesperson said.

In the evening, the government carried out sweeping changes in the administrative set-up and replaced several officials, including the chief secretary. Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority chief Ratnakar Gaikwad was appointed chief secretary, replacing J.P. Dange.

The Mumbai municipal commissioner and the principal secretary to the revenue department have also been changed. Changes were also ordered in departments like urban development, finance and planning, government sources said.

Lalla’s exit came a day after CBI sources indicated that they had collected adequate evidence to nail some top bureaucrats and army officers for allegedly manipulating records in the Adarsh Housing Society. The purge is also in line with the clean-up Prithviraj Chavan had promised when he replaced Ashok Chavan as chief minister in November.

While the furore over the Adarsh scam cost Ashok Chavan his job, Lalla became the first of the 11 IAS officers under the scanner to put in his papers.

The Prithviraj Chavan administration had last week informally advised Lalla and state information commissioner Ramanand Tiwari to step down on “moral grounds”.

However, both had stayed defiant, forcing the government to consider the long-drawn option of seeking the consent of the Supreme Court and the President as the officials held constitutional posts and could only be removed under the provisions of the Protection of Human Rights Act and the Right to Information Act.

At the 20-minute “one-on-one” meeting with the governor, Chavan is believed to have discussed the Adarsh scam.

Lalla was the secretary to the urban development department before he was appointed secretary to former chief minister Shinde in 2004. He also served in the same capacity for a brief period when Vilasrao Deshmukh was appointed chief minister for a second term after the 2004 elections.

Shinde is now the Union power minister while Deshmukh is the heavy industries minister at the Centre.

“Lalla had no role to play in the Adarsh scam when he was urban development secretary. But as the chief minister’s secretary, he wrote letters to the urban development and revenue departments to grant the concessions demanded by the Adarsh promoters. There was clearly a clash of interest when his relatives became members of the society,” said RTI activist Simpreet Singh.

After resigning, Lalla refused to admit any wrongdoing. He said his resignation was “voluntary” to maintain the dignity of the rights panel, and save the government from embarrassment.

In the letter, Lalla said his father Shaligram Lalla, who worked in the Military Engineering Services in Nagpur, and Adarsh chief promoter R.C. Thakur, who was also posted in Nagpur, were neighbours and hence his father was made a member of the Adarsh society “which was originally meant for defence and defence allied personnel and their families”.

Lalla said after his father’s demise, his mother Sushila Shaligram was inducted as a member in July 1998 while his daughter Sumeela Sethi was made a member in April 1999.

“I was posted in Mantralaya (the secretariat) for the first time in mid-2000 as secretary to the social justice department and to the chief minister’s office much later in 2004. Hence it may kindly be seen that membership of my relatives is much prior to my coming to Mantralaya,” Lalla wrote in his resignation letter.

“I want to clarify here that this act of resigning from the post is totally voluntary and in no way an admission of any guilt or wrongdoing on my part and I am confident that any fair inquiry will conclude that,” he added.