Return of the prodigal: 'Separatist' Shah Faesal back in the service

Faesal's reinstatement in the IAS portends ill for the premier civil service and will impact the government's position in cases that might come up before the Central Administrative Tribunal and other

A day before he was detained at Delhi airport on August 14, 2019, trying to board a flight to Turkey, 'renegade' Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Shah Faesal tweeted that the only choice after the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was to “either be a stooge or a separatist”.

A contrite Faesal who had resigned citing “unabated killings” in Kashmir on January 9, 2019, has re-joined the IAS three years later, meekly mumbling, “My idealism has let me down.” The government has embraced him despite his earlier description of his years in the IAS as “ten years in jail.”

Within days of his reinstatement, the J&K government repatriated Faesal to Delhi. Faesal clearly has patrons in the very government that he criticised for the better part of his aborted political career. In retrospect, it is hard to avoid speculation that Shah Faesal’s activities were stage-managed by them.

One needs to step back into the grey area that existed in J&K after the withdrawal of support by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to its alliance government with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). The state was first put under Governor’s Rule (provided for in the J&K Constitution as it then existed) and then under President’s Rule. Following this, the BJP toyed with the idea of forming a government that would not include either the PDP or the National Conference.

When that did not work, the strategy changed – to one of launching a new political party with a fresh and modern Muslim face in J&K to contest elections to the state assembly. Shah Faesal’s Jammu and Kashmir Peoples’ Movement (JKPM) was launched on March 19, 2019. Firebrand left-wing student leader from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, Shehla Rashid, also joined it as General Secretary. Faesal and Rashid claimed they had crowd-funded the party. Rashid’s father alleged that she had received Rs 3 crore from dubious sources to join the party.

However, by the summer of 2019, a far more confident BJP government at the Centre had given up the idea of winning elections to the state legislature for a far more radical plan. The special status of J&K was abrogated and the state was bifurcated into two Union Territories. All mainstream Kashmiri leaders were detained on August 4 and 5, 2019. Faesal was left out, making any future political role for him untenable.

He was arrested later with a lot of publicity from Delhi Airport. This was after he had tweeted that he was planning to go abroad, a Look-Out Circular had been issued against him as if on cue. Perhaps this was a belated bid to shore up his position among Kashmiri leaders – clearly, his friends in Delhi still saw him as a potential player. In February 2020, he was booked under the Public Safety Act for promoting separatism. He was released after ten months and placed under house arrest.

By this time Faesal’s JKPM had become shaky. Shehla Rashid had quit and the Centre appeared to be betting on another outfit, the J&K Apani Party, led by businessman Altaf Bukhari. It was launched on March 8, 2020, with deserters from other parties. Three months prior to the October 2020 District Development Council Elections, Faesal quit politics for good.

Since early 2021, he began efforts to withdraw his resignation from the IAS. His tweets described Prime Minister Modi’s “Mann ki Baat” as “1.3 billion people coming together as a family on a Sunday morning and each being heard and spoken to, each one feeling counted.” He also claimed that through its Covid vaccination programme “India (was) assuming global leadership as Jagat Guru”. In February, Minister of State for Department of Personnel and Training, Jitendra Singh, certified that Faesal had now had a “change of heart”. Rehabilitation seemed only a matter of time. Initial rumours suggested an appointment as director of the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar or as Advisor to the Lieutenant Governor of J&K. Finally, however, he was reinstated in the IAS.

His reinstatement is problematic under the existing All India Services (Death-cum-Retirement Benefits) Rules, 1958, because it allows only for a period of 90-days to withdraw one’s resignation. Moreover, rules expressly prohibit the withdrawal of resignation if the officer has participated in political activity during the period the resignation was pending.

Disciplinary proceedings were already on against Faesal for a tweet of July 2018 while in service which said, “Population + Patriarchy + Illiteracy + Alcohol + Porn + Technology +Anarchy = Rapistan”. He denied that this referred to India but action against him was initiated both by the J&K government and the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. These proceedings have apparently been dropped now.

Contrast his case with IAS officer, Kannan Gopinath, a non-Kashmiri, who resigned from service over the abrogation of the special status of J&K. He was pursued by the government through various FIRs for not joining duty. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him for his interactions with the media. He did not seek withdrawal of his resignation and was sacked from the IAS. For far more egregious actions, Faesal has been welcomed home.

This portends ill for the premier civil service and will impact the government's position in cases that might come up before the Central Administrative Tribunal and other courts. The government needs to explain why it dropped disciplinary proceedings against Faesal and why his launching a political party and making political statements in domestic and foreign media were not seen as conduct unbecoming of a civil servant.

The cause which politicised Faesal does not matter if the discipline of the bureaucracy is to be maintained. To this day the veterans of the Indian National Army (INA) are designated as deserters by the Army. To protect the discipline of the armed forces, even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and then Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel did not allow the induction of the INA soldiers into the regular armed forces.

That is why it seems Faesal might have been an integral part of a political operation of the powers that be in J&K.