IAS officer absconding for 8 years gets fresh posting

TIMES NEWS NETWORK TOI Hyderabad Edition 24/10/2008

Hyderabad: Bureaucratic circles are agog over the sudden resurfacing of an IAS officer who has been absent without leave (AWOL) for almost a decade and as to how he managed a posting after that. Subhrendu Bhattacharya, an IAS officer of the 1976 batch, was among the 26 officers who were given new postings.
After being AWOL for about eight years, Bhattacharya was posted as commissioner of inquiries in the general administration department (GAD). Subhrendu first went on casual leave when he was posted as the MD of APIDC on August 1, 2000. He did not report for duty even after the expiry of the leave. Later, Mohammed Shaffiquzzaman, another IAS officer, succeeded him. Three months later, GAD wrote to Shafiquzzaman to report on Subhrendu’s whereabouts. “When the GAD is unaware of his whereabouts, how could it expect me to know,” Shafiquzzaman was said to have written back. It was common knowledge in the bureaucratic circles that Subhrendu was employed in the US.
The question that is being raised is that how can an all India services officer who was literally absconding for eight years be forgiven and given a posting. According to sources, Subhrendu informed the state about his absence only once in his eight years of absence. “When the media speculated as to whether he was alive or dead, he wrote to them last year stating that he was very much alive,” said one official.
The GAD maintains that there was nothing wrong in his posting. “An inquiry is on regarding his long absence without permission,” said a senior GAD official. Sources told TOI that orders for reinstating Subhrendu came from the highest quarters. How Subhrendu was able to convince the powers that be remains a mystery. The officer himself could not be contacted. Some of his colleagues said that he is in his hometown in Uttar Pradesh. They also revealed that the officer who had landed in India a couple of months ago was lobbying secretly so that he would be allowed to join back. On being asked the possible reason for the official to come back , one official said: “He has three years of service left. If he serves for that period he will get full retirement benefits.”