Delhi Assembly panel visits bureaucrat Rajasekhar's hometown in AP to verify his OBC certificate

A panel of the Delhi Assembly recently visited Andhra Pradesh's Anakapalli, the hometown of senior IAS officer and Special Secretary (vigilance) Y V V J Rajasekhar, to verify the authenticity of his OBC certificate. A complaint was filed against Rajasekhar by a suspended DANICS officer that he had submitted a "fake" OBC certificate while giving the Civil Service Examination in 1994.

New Delhi : Amid the ongoing tussle between the ruling AAP and bureaucrats of the Delhi government, a panel of the legislative assembly recently visited the hometown of Special Secretary (vigilance) Y V V J Rajasekhar to verify his OBC certificate. In June, a complaint was filed against Rajasekhar by suspended DANICS officer Premnath that he had submitted a "fake" OBC certificate while giving the Civil Service Examination in 1994. It was alleged by the complainant that Rajasekhar did not belong to this category.

The OBC welfare committee of the Delhi Assembly, taking cognizance of the complaint, issued a notice to Rajasekhar to appear before it to present his stand. Rajasekhar did not appear before the committee, but communicated to the panel that it has no jurisdiction in the services matters as per the extant rules. No immediate reaction was available from Rajasekhar on the matter.

A three-member sub committee of the assembly's OBC welfare committee, headed by AAP MLA Madan Lal, earlier this week visited Vishakhapatnam and Anakapalli to check the authenticity of Rajasekhar's caste certificate. Lal said the committee has issued "multiple notices" to Rajasekhar but he did not appear before it. The committee then sought information from services and vigilance departments but their respective secretaries did not provide any information nor appeared before the panel, he said.

"The committee visited Vishakhapatnam where it learnt that Anakapalli, to which Rajasekhar belonged, was now a separate district in Andhra Pradesh. The officers at Anakapalli did not co-operate with the sub committee and did not furnish any information on the matter," he said. The committee will now decide its future course of action in the next meeting, he said.

Sources said Rajasekhar was targeted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as he was overseeing several probes concerning the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi. Rajasekhar was selected as a DANICS (Delhi Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Services) officer by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). Document verification of officers at the time of their initial appointment is done by the UPSC, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) that verified Rajasekhar's caste certificate at the time of his joining 30 years ago, sources said.

"It is surprising that all three bodies - UPSC, DoPT, MHA - are situated less than 10 kms from the Delhi Legislative Assembly, but the AAP MLAs chose to travel 2,000 kms to verify the officer's caste certificate in Andhra Pradesh," they said. AAP MLAs Sahi Ram and Naresh Yadav are the other members of the sub committee. (PTI)