IAS official resigns 'to transcend limitations that service imposes'

Lucknow: An officer in Uttar Pradesh has resigned from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) "to transcend limitations that the service imposes".

Anil Kumar, a revenue board member in Allahabad for the past one year, put in his papers on Tuesday, though the resignation is yet to be formally accepted by the government.

"It is a well thought out decision. I have not acted on an impulse or provocation. During the past 17 years of service, I felt that I was not able to really deliver as the priorities were directed somewhere else," Kumar, a 1989 batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer, said yesterday.

Twelve IAS officers in Maharashtra have quit over the past year and three put in their papers recently in Andhra Pradesh.

Kumar wrote in his resignation letter: "It is my belief that the time has come to transcend the limitations that the service imposes and to be of greater use to the community, to the state, the nation, the world and the human race, so that one could strive towards self-actualisation.

Glamour

"Having served in the IAS for 17 years, I do not even have any craving for the glamour of power that this service offers. I am through with all that."

A graduate in statistics, he had joined the IAS with great aspirations. "But my first disenchantment came during my stint as chief development officer in Fatehpur in 1993 when I realised that under the existing system, it was not how you have used public money, but how much you have used that matters since the emphasis was only on utilisation of allocated funds," he said.

"At that stage I was still hopeful that maybe it was one bad experience and perhaps time would give me more opportunities to really deliver," he said. "However, now that stage is gone past and I can clearly visualise what lies ahead. So there is no point sticking along in a system where ... no one is bothered about delivery and quality."