CHANDIGARH: 1991-batch IAS officer Ashok Khemka, known for his uprightness during his 33-year-long career in which he was transferred 57 times, has been posted as Additional Chief Secretary of Transport. Khemka, who will retire on April 30 next year, has replaced 1994-batch IPS officer Navdeep Virk. Khemka has returned to the transport department, overseen by Anil Vij, transport minister of the state; ten years ago, he had been posted as transport commissioner during the first term of the then BJP government with Manohar Lal Khattar as Chief Minister. When Khemka was the state transport commissioner, he refused to issue fitness certificates to oversized trucks and trailers for transporting automobiles and white goods leading to a truckers’ strike. Then the state government gave them one year to get their vehicles modified according to the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), 1989 after which they then withdrew their strike. He served in the department for only four months. Last year, Khemka sent a letter to the then Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and offered to “root out corruption” with a stint in the vigilance department, writing that he had sacrificed his service career in his zeal to end corruption. “Towards the end of my service career, I offer my services to head the vigilance department to root out corruption. If given an opportunity, I assure you there would be a real war against corruption and no one, however high and mighty, will be spared,” he then wrote. He came to the limelight in 2012 when he cancelled the mutation of a Gurugram land deal linked to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra. On Sunday, the Haryana government effected a major administrative shake-up by transferring 44 IAS officers, including administrative secretaries of several departments. In the last decade, Khemka has been posted in departments, considered ‘low profile.’ Over his entire career, on average, he has been transferred about every six months.
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