Vijayan govt orders probe against suspended IAS officer Prasanth

Thiruvananthapuram, July 24 The Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left government has issued orders for a probe by a senior IAS official against now-suspended IAS officer N. Prasanth.

The probe will be conducted by Additional Chief Secretary Rajan Koborgade, and he has been asked to complete it in three months' time.

The probe has been ordered after the reply from Prasanth on the notice of his suspension was found not satisfactory.

The 2007-batch IAS officer was suspended in November last year after he made serious allegations against senior bureaucrats, including Additional Chief Secretary A. Jayathilak (1991-batch), IAS officer K. Gopalakrishnan (2013-batch), and the recently retired Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan.

Incidentally, the general norm when an IAS officer is suspended, within six months, a probe should be conducted and the report submitted. But in Prasanth’s case, this has not happened. It is after nine months that the probe has been announced, and in between, his suspension was extended thrice.

However, with Jayathilak, the chief secretary, and Kobrogade, an officer below him, the probe’s sanctity has been questioned from a few quarters. Prasanth, while being the Kozhikode District Collector, had won the hearts of many through his actions and has a massive following on social media.

The controversy over his suspension in November last year was centred around an enquiry report allegedly prepared by Jayathilak, which accused Prasanth of being responsible for missing documents linked to the Unnathi project during his tenure as CEO, irregularities in his attendance records, and violations of service conduct, including making derogatory social media posts.

Prasanth has always maintained that the case against him has been built on unreliable digital evidence and lacks procedural and legal merit.

He also targeted Jayathilak and Gopalakrishnan for his suspension.

Another action of Prasanth which has irked the higher-ups is his frequent statements through his social media page, and even the personal hearing that he had with previous Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan was also made public by him.

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