Top Secret · The Times of India

Tribunal orders tour diary in whistleblower rating dispute

A bureaucratic paper chase, not a verdict, is what the tribunal actually ordered this week.

Civil servant exposes wrongdoing, gets a bad annual rating, fights it for years through procedure: that script is familiar in Indian government service, and Sanjiv Chaturvedi has lived through versions of it before, in Haryana forestry postings and later at AIIMS. This Uttarakhand round follows the same shape. An officer claims his ACR was marked down in retaliation, and the tribunal has to drag records out of people who did not volunteer them.

The Times of India headline suggests confrontation. What the Central Administrative Tribunal actually did was order document production: action-taken records from the chief secretary and the forests principal secretary, plus RK Sudhanshu’s 2024-25 tour diary. That is discovery. It is not a finding of bias, and it is not a ruling on anyone’s conduct.

The diary could matter later. If Sudhanshu’s recorded movements that year don’t line up with the dates he allegedly assessed Chaturvedi’s work, that becomes useful evidence for the whistleblower’s side. If they do line up, the complaint may struggle. Nobody outside the file knows yet, and CAT hasn’t said when it will.

Watch the follow-up hearing, not this one.

Source: The Times of India source