Omar Abdullah reacts after J-K’s outgoing CS retains the official car, office & breaking protocol of attending official meetings

Omar Abdullah said that there was a visible split in the administration between loyalists of the outgoing Chief Secretary and “others who want to get on with their work but can’t figure out what’s going on.”

Vice President of Jammu Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), Omar Abdullah on Tuesday reacted to reports of outgoing Chief Secretary, B. V. R. Subrahmanyam retaining his official car, office and breaking the protocol of attending official meetings.

Reacting to one such tweet of Pradeep Dutta, Senior Editor of Times Now, the NC leader said that there was a visible split in the administration between loyalists of the outgoing Chief Secretary and “others who want to get on with their work but can’t figure out what’s going on.”Omar Abdullah also wondered if there were two Chief Secretaries in Jammu and Kashmir.

Omar Abdullah tweet read, “Two Chief Secretaries in J&K, an administration split between loyalists of the outgoing CS & others who want to get on with their work but can’t figure out what’s going on. So much for good governance & accountability.”

Pradeep Dutta had claimed that the outgoing Chief Secretary was using the official car and office, and also attended a meeting on Monday chaired by the Lieutenant Governor, while new appointee A K Mehta was forced to operate from another office.

He had tweeted, “#J&K Today | Aik Vidhan, Aik Nishan & 2 Chief Secretaries | Outgoing CS still retains car with CS flag, attends meeting chaired by LG & new CS, continues operating from CS office leaving ArunMehta with no option but to operate from FC office. Is this Good Governance or Arrogance?”

Dutta later created a tweet thread and posted an interesting tweet which said that a ‘technocrat’ called him and said it was disobedience of the Chief Secretary and not his arrogance.

“After going through my tweet one of the technocrat called me and said: “this is not arrogance but disobedience.” In his view it is like challenging writ of #PM and setting wrong precedence,” he tweeted.

The administration had on Saturday directed administrative secretaries to address all communications from May 31 to the new Chief Secretary, A K Mehta.

According to official orders issued on Thursday, Subrahmanyam, a 1987-batch IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre, will come to the Centre as an Officer on Special Duty in the Commerce Ministry and will take over as Secretary, Department of Commerce, upon Anup Wadhawan’s superannuation on June 30.

Subrahmanyam had taken over as the Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir in June 2018, and during his tenure, its special status was scrapped in 2019 and the state was bifurcated into two union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.