india

Updated: Sep 08, 2019 07:36 IST

Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer S Sasikanth Senthil said on Saturday that he had quit because of the effective revocation of Article 370, which conferred special status on Jammu and Kashmir.

“What is happening in the national scenario pushed me to get out of the services. It is not related to the state [government], just the overall framework of politics which is being pushed on the nation that is very troublesome for me. I feel this reached a crescendo when it came to the abrogation of Article 370,” Senthil said in an interview.

Senthil, deputy commissioner of Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, announced his resignation on Friday. saying he had quit for personal reasons as he felt it was unethical to continue in the IAS at a time when the “building blocks of our Constitution are being compromised”. In resigning, Senthil followed in the footsteps of another IAS officer, Kannan Gopinathan, who also resigned citing similar reasons in August.

Senthil, a 2009 batch IAS officer who belongs to Tamil Nadu, said in the interview that he had always been a keen observer of politics.

“People have become hyper nationalist. People can’t encourage intellectual debate. I cannot sit in the bureaucracy and observe these things. If I have to do something about it, I have to come out from service, which is why I resigned,” he said.

Senthil denied that he had any ambitions to enter electoral politics, but said that he would engage with groups and people. He said there were no other grounds for his decision to resign beyond the ones he has already cited.

“I have worked under three governments and in three districts. Never did I feel that my government was pushing me to do something that I didn’t want to do. And I didn’t leave service for things like remuneration, I think it has gone beyond such things. In fact, I feel whatever we are being paid is much more than what we actually deserve,” he said.

State law minister JC Madhuswamy of the Bharatiya Janata Party said: “What is Senthil’s connection with Kashmir? Doesn’t this reek of hypocrisy?”

Madhuswamy said he respected Senthil as an upright officer. “He shouldn’t have taken such a decision, he should have continued serving the people,” Madhuswamy added. “There shouldn’t be any surprise in the central government’s move (on J&K), it has been a part of the BJP’s manifesto in every election,” he said. “Besides, is he not disrespecting the mandate of the people by going against the government they voted for?”