Yogi govt merges service cadres of cash rich development authorities

Continuing with its purported agenda of purging cash rich development authorities in Uttar Pradesh, especially Noida and Greater Noida, of corruption, the Yogi Adityanath government has decided to merge the service cadres of nine such entities into a centralised body.

The state cabinet has approved the UP Industrial Area Development (Amendment) Bill 2017, which would integrate these development authorities and subject the new cadre thus formed to transfers within these bodies.

Earlier, the Yogi administration had also recommended CAG audit of Noida and Greater Noida, while CBI is already probing cases of some shady transactions in these development authorities.

The state cabinet meeting chaired by Yogi last evening approved a proposal, under which UP Industrial Development Authority Centralised Service cadre would be instituted by amending the UP Industrial Area Development Act 1976. This Act was based on UP Urban Planning and Development Act 1973.

The nine industrial development authorities are UP State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDC), Noida, Greater Noida, Gorakhpur Industrial Development Authority (GIDA),  Satharia Industrial Development Authority (SIDA), Lucknow Industrial Development Authority (LIDA), Yamuna Expressway Authority, UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) and UP State Industrial Development Authority (UPSIDA).

The employees of the centralised cadre would be subjected to the new transfer policy and those unwilling to come under its purview, would be offered a golden handshake.

Briefing newspersons after the cabinet meet, UP industries minister Satish Mahana said the new proposal would unlock the potential of the human resources available with the different development authorities and depute them according to requirements and their skills.

However, according to highly placed sources, a major reason for clubbing the employees under a single cadre is to break the nexus of corrupt officials, who have been holding posts in Noida and Greater Noida for decades and indulging in corrupt practices.

Earlier, the Yogi government had recommended CAG audit of Noida, Greater Noida, Yamuna Expressway and UPSIDC. The CBI is already been probing Noida land deals for alleged kickbacks and shady transactions, while its suspended chief engineer Yadav Singh is cooling heels in jail even as investigations continue.

In its first major bureaucratic reshuffle on April 12 after assuming power, the government had transferred 20 IAS officers, benching some of the blue eyed bureaucrats of the previous Akhilesh regime. It included the transfer of officials attached with Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) in the National Capital Region (NCR). The state government had also transferred Rama Raman, who was chairman Noida besides principal secretary UP infrastructure and industrial development and NRI departments; Deepak Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Greater Noida and Noida; and Vijay Kumar Yadav, vice president GDA.

While, there have been allegations of last scale corruption in the land deals of Noida and Greater Noida spanning the two previous SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) regimes, the Yadav Singh case continues to make headlines for kickbacks in contravention of rules.