PANAJI: The Congress party on Wednesday wrote to the Union home ministry seeking that the IAS officer Chokha Ram Garg should be terminated for not upholding the Constitution as law secretary in Goa.
The party, which alleges that Garg was biased in favour of the BJP, has also sought an investigation into the officer’s sources of income.
The Congress party has also appealed to chief secretary Parimal Rai urging him to relieve Garg as law secretary.
“We have demanded from the union ministry of home affairs to suspend Chokha Ram Garg because he is found to be indulging in corruption and an inquiry should be held against him to see if he has disproportionate assets,” said state Congress party president Girish Chodankar.
Garg, a 2008 batch IAS officer was appointed as law secretary and subsequently as State Election Commissioner after the abrupt resignation of the earlier State Election Commissioner RK Shrivastava. Garg oversaw the Zilla Panchayat elections and had initiated the election process for 11 municipal elections which were eventually challenged before the High Court of Bombay and the Supreme Court.
Chodankar in his complaints said that the BJP government chose to appoint Garg as SEC instead of finding an independent officer in order to have a “pliable” authority. The Supreme Court in its verdict on the municipal poll reservation process had also noted that Garg flouted the constitutional mandate and attempted to over-reach the judiciary.
“The law secretary is the highest law officer of the state and if such a man is going to guide the state, I don’t think he is fit to even sit for a day as the law secretary or as an IAS officer. We can’t have such type of people misguiding the government and the best place is to send them home,” said former assistant solicitor general of India and chairman of the Congress party’s legal cell Carlos Alvares Ferreira.
Justifying the demand for Garg to be relieved and suspended, Congress has said that the IAS officer had brought disrepute to the IAS fraternity. They have also demanded that the election and legal expenses incurred by the state and by candidates should be recovered from Garg.