IAS officer from Kolkata with 57 transfers in 34 years reitres

Senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka, a name synonymous with honesty and perseverance in the Indian bureaucracy, retires today after an eventful career spanning nearly 34 years. Known widely for standing up to political pressure and exposing corruption, Khemka concludes his service as Additional Chief Secretary of the Transport Department in Haryana, a position he took over in December 2024.

A 1991-batch officer of the Haryana cadre, Khemka rose to national fame in 2012 when he cancelled the mutation of a Gurugram land deal connected to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. Mutation is a key process in transferring land ownership, and this bold action sparked intense public and political discourse.

Throughout his career, Khemka was transferred 57 times, an extraordinary figure that highlights both his resistance to compromise and the resistance he faced from successive governments. This means he changed departments almost every six months, likely setting a record for transfers within the Haryana administration.

In recent years, Khemka was frequently assigned to low-profile departments, especially the Archives Department, where he served four times. His repeated postings to departments with little relevance to mainstream governance drew criticism from civil society and support from transparency advocates.

In 2023, Khemka made headlines again when he volunteered to lead the state vigilance department, expressing a desire to "root out corruption." In a strongly worded letter to CM Manohar Lal Khattar, he highlighted the unequal workload distribution among bureaucrats and underscored his own marginalisation in the system.

A highly educated civil servant, Ashok Khemka was born in Kolkata in 1965 and boasts a rich academic profile. He holds a BTech from IIT Kharagpur, a PhD in Computer Science from TIFR, an MBA, and even pursued LLB from Panjab University during his service.