The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Kumar & Kumar: The officers in charge of Delhi
The Chief Minister and his deputy in jail on corruption charges and a govt under virtual lockdown. It’s in these circumstances that the Centre has strengthened the hands of 2 key bureaucrats in Delhi — Naresh Kumar and Ashwani Kumar — officers who have ha
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N EARLY March 2022, a press conference called to announce elections later that year to the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) took an unexpected turn. Flanked by senior officials, State Election CommissionerS KS riva sta va told reporters that he had received a communication from the Centre “just half an hour ago”, informing him that the Capital’s three civic bodies would be merged into a single entity, effectively reversing the erstwhile Congress government’s decision a decade ago. The elections to the MCD, he announced, would therefore be deferred.
A fortnight after the announcement, the Union Cabinet approved The Delhi Municipal Corporation Amendment Act 2022, effectively bringing the MCD, the primary tier of the Capital’s administration, directly under the Centre’s control.
On April 19, 2022, a single-page order issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) announced the arrival of two senior AGMUT cadre IAS officers — Naresh Kumar of the 1987 batch, who had then been serving in Arunachal Pradesh as Chief Secretary, and Ashwani Kumar of the 1992 batch who occupied the same position in Puducherry — to Delhi without disclosing the posts they would occupy.
Since then, the two mild-mannered officers — both with several years of administrative experience in the Capital and, according to sources in the bureaucracy who have worked with them over the years, known for being “sticklers for the rules” as well as their “by-the-book” approach — have steadily risen to occupy the Delhi bureaucracy’s highest offices, personifying the de facto administration in the national Capital where the elected state government is under a virtual lockdown.
With Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia behind bars for alleged graft in the liquor policy case and the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government seemingly rudderless, Naresh and Ashwani, who have had a series of public run-ins with the elected government, have been firmly established in the saddle of Delhi’s administration. Last week, the Centre gave Naresh Kumar, currently Chief Secretary of Delhi, additional charge of Chairperson of NDMC, while Ashwani Kumar was made Commissioner of the Aap-ruled MCD.
According to a senior Delhi government official, Ashwani, who held the key posts of Revenue Secretary and Principal Secretary (Home), is continuing in both these roles since there has been no order to the contrary after his appointment as MCD Commissioner so far.
Timing of the appointments
The two officers are known to have distinct personalities and styles of working.
Ashwani, who has a demonstrated penchant for Delhi history, Urdu as well as Hindi poetry, is known for his efficient file management and has an eye for administrative minutiae. As the face and voice of Delhi bureaucracy, he has both fielded and levelled allegations at the AAP on more than one occasion.
Naresh, on the other hand, is low profile, tech-savvy, and an individual of few words with a flair for almost compulsive note-taking and statistics. Both hail from Uttar Pradesh and find common ground in their educational background — Naresh is a mechanical engineer by training and Ashwani an electrical engineer, and both are certificate holders (Naresh in Management and Ashwani in International Development) from Duke University. Professionally, their paths have coincided several times, especially during their long stints in the Delhi bureaucracy over the last three to four decades.
While Naresh has in the past led the MCD as Commissioner, besides heading the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), among other positions, Ashwani has worked in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and also held the position of Environment Secretary.
While Naresh is the most senior AGMUT cadre officer posted in the Delhi government, Ashwani, who is five years junior to him, has at least three senior IAS officers in the city who are above him in the AGMUT cadre’s hierarchy.
The latest appointments of Naresh and Ashwani come at a crucial political juncture — just when the dust is settling on the results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections and with months to go for the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections.
By handing each of them the reins of the first tier of governance in the city — the NDMC to Naresh and the MCD to Ashwani — the Centre has divvied up Delhi’s territorial jurisdiction between its two “trusted” officers.
As NDMC chairperson, Naresh will have control over the civic administration of both the VIP Lutyens’ zone, which houses Parliament and foreign missions, and Ashwani, as MCD Commissioner, will have control over the rest of Delhi.
“At first glance, what comes to mind is that the Chief Minister’s own Assembly constituency of New Delhi falls under the NDMC. In that context, the decision to post
Naresh Kumar and Ashwani Kumar in charge of significant bodies such as the NDMC and MCD, apart from the other important positions they already hold, appears as much a political one as it is an acknowledgement of their administrative abilities,” said a senior bureaucrat posted in Delhi.
With the Delhi Assembly elections a few months away, the officer said, the appointments are also seemingly aimed at not wanting to rock the city’s administrative boat till next year so that the Centre’s projects can be implemented on the ground.
A senior IAS officer said Naresh and Ashwani together form Delhi's “third power centre”, one that’s distinct, even if not separate, from the office of Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena.
According to another source in the bureaucracy, the two officers “ably operated” under the umbrella of Saxena’s “nononsense approach” towards the rules and procedures governing the administration of the Capital.
“Saxena is not only the link but has also become a rallying point for Delhi bureaucracy to defend itself against allegations levelled by AAP leaders. It is with him at the core that both these officers are able to discharge their duties without fear of the AAP government,” the source said.
Bureaucracy vs AAP
It was no surprise then that the AAP did not view the latest appointments of the two officers kindly, with senior AAP leader and Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Thursday questioning the Centre over Naresh’s new role and terming him “an agent of the BJP”.
“Everyone from the Chief Minister to the ministers have written to the Union Home Ministry demanding the removal of Naresh Kumar on issues ranging from shielding of insubordinate bureaucrats to throwing a spanner in the AAP’S developmental work — but nothing has come of it. His conduct, which is in the public domain, is enough evidence of him being used as an instrument to administer Delhi through the backdoor by the BJP,” an AAP leader alleged.
It’s an accusation with several precedents. Naresh and the AAP government had locked horns over modalities related to internal polls in the MCD which, finally, could not take place since Kejriwal was not in a position to sign a file related to the appointment of a presiding officer.
“There is no denying that both of them were, and continue to be, handpicked by the Centre. The MHA views and trusts them as able administrators who are understood to be in direct touch with it. It was Naresh ji who convinced the Centre of criminality in the liquor policy case,” said a bureaucratic source.
“The CS (Naresh) is well-versed with vigilance matters... It was he who had flagged irregularities in the liquor policy on the basis of which a Delhi vigilance inquiry was launched and its findings made their way to central investigation agencies like the CBI and ED, eventually landing the AAP’S senior leadership behind bars,” the bureaucrat said.
Both Naresh and Ashwani have held significant sway over the Capital’s bureaucracy despite them being the subject of several inquiries launched by the Delhi government, for reasons ranging from alleged shortcomings in their administrative duties to insubordination.
At the conclusion of an eight-year-long legal tussle over the issue of services — that saw both sides going after each other almost every day — in May 2023, the Supreme Court directed the Bjp-led Centre to back off from Delhi’s administrative affairs, particularly in relation to the transfer, posting and vigilance matters of officials in its government departments.
Within days, the Centre brought in an Ordinance, later enacted as a law, to wrest back the reins of the Capital’s officialdom from the hands of the AAP government and placed these in the hands of Naresh and Ashwani, with the final word being the L-G’S.
As the two Centre-appointed bureaucrats on the three-member National Capital Civil Services Authority (NCCSA), they outnumber the third member — Kejriwal, who, in his capacity as CM, is chairperson — and are a direct link between the Bjp-led Centre and the capital's administration in matters ranging from transfers and postings to vigilance complaints against Delhi government officials.
Last year, Ashwani accused the AAP and its leaders of “dirty politics” on two occasions — first, after incessant rainfall and a Yamuna in spate led to waterlogging in Delhi and painted a sorry picture of the city’s administration ahead of the G-20 Summit; and later, when he defended Naresh over allegations that the Chief Secretary played a role in an “exorbitant compensation award” for a parcel of land in Southwest Delhi.
“This is not just politics, this is dirty politics. Parties and politicians can do their politics ... But this baseless mudslinging ...( is) being done ... because Chief Secretary has taken action on... self-advertisement, CM’S bungalow, liquor scam, Jal Board issue...,” Ashwani told reporters on November 13 last year.
Another complaint, that Naresh Kumar allegedly bent tender-related rules at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in his capacity as the hospital’s chairman to favour his son’s start-up, had worsened the standoff between the bureaucracy and the state government.