Not the civil servant in question. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly India is going through some serious public sector reforms under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So not turning up for work for a quarter of a century is now not OK, as one civil servant found out recently.

India's Central Public Works Department (CPWD), in a press release dated Jan. 8, 2015, announced the dismissal of a senior electrical engineer employed by the department for 35 years. He only worked the first 10.

It sounds like the CPWD could use a bit of reorganisation. The employee stopped turning up for work in 1990, and an inquiry was launched in 1992. The department then seems to have forgotten about it for 13 years:

Shri A.K.Verma, who joined CPWD as an Assistant Executive Engineer in 1980 went on Earned Leave in December, 1990 and did not report to work thereafter. He went on seeking extension of leave which was not sanctioned and defied directions to report to work. An Inquiry was instituted against him in September, 1992 for major penalty for willful absence from duty. Due to non-cooperation of Shri Verma with the Inquiry and for other reasons, it got delayed and a fresh charge sheet was issued in 2005. The Inquiry Report, establishing the charges was submitted in July, 2007 and the same was accepted by the then Minister of Urban Development in August, 2007. But no further action was taken in the matter.

Charges were clearly established six years ago, but Verma apparently remained in employment for another eight years until he was sacked today. It's not clear from the press release whether he was paid over the whole period. In 2014, a German civil servant admitted he hadn't done any work in the last 14 years, but Verma beats him by a decade.