Ashok Khemka finally bids good-bye to bureaucracy

Ashok Khemka, a bureaucrat known for his whistle-blowing tendency, is finally bidding good-bye to bureaucracy today. His missionary zeal to weed out corruption seems to have proved his nemesis. It is duly manifested through his 57 transfers during his 34-year-old bureaucratic career. Over his entire career, Khemka was transferred about every six months on average, probably the highest among the state’s bureaucrats.

An IIT Kharagpur alumnus, this 1991-batch Haryana cadre IAS officer shot into prominence in 2012 when he cancelled the mutation of a Gurugram land deal linked to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law, Robert Vadra. But that was the flash point in his career.

In 2023, Khemka went to the extent of offering to root out corruption from Haryana. He shot off a letter to then Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar wishing to head the vigilance department for it. In the letter he wrote, “Towards the end of my service career, I offer my services to head the vigilance department to root out corruption.”

His problem was his burning desire to wage a war against corruption. Khemka in his letter to Khattar, had reportedly written, “If given an opportunity, I assure you there would be a real war against corruption and no one however high and mighty will be spared.”

But there was no taker for Khemka’s uprightness in the system, not even during the BJP regime. It is proved by the fact that he was often given a low-profile job. Just for an example, Khemka had been posted to the Archives department for the fourth time despite having served it as Director General and later as Principal Secretary. Interestingly, three of these stints were during the tenure of the BJP government.

That was perhaps the reason why Khemka once remarked that he had sacrificed his service career in his zeal to end corruption. Needless to point out then that Khemka nursed a feeling of despondency all through his career. What he once remarked in a philosophical vein, virtually sums up his feelings, “Straight trees are always cut first. No regrets,” Khemka had rued.