Bhopal: A dalit IAS officer of 1993 batch, Ramesh Thete, who retired on Friday, July 31, has come out with allegations of caste discrimination during his tenure. He expressed his pain and anguish through a letter on the last day of his retirement, alleging injustice meted out to him for being an Ambedkarite
In an open letter titled, “Lekin yeh sabit hua ki tum nyay hee nahi karna chahte (But it is proved that you don’t want to do justice), Thete wrote that his retirement from service feels like being freed from slavery.
“I have paid the price for being an Ambedkarite. I was the only IAS from Madhya Pradesh cadre who kept Baba Saheb’s photo on my table and worked for the uplift of downtrodden without any fear throughout my service,” the now retired IAS wrote in his letter, adding, “Organised gangs of casteists hounded me and preyed on me.”
Targeting the casteist forces, he wrote that ‘they’ did not let him become a Collector despite being a direct IAS officer. “Despite being eligible to be promoted as Principal Secretary, ‘they’ got me entangled in illegal cases,” he alleged.
The letter further said that the officer’s contribution to the construction of a model road in Jabalpur through public participation and giving permanent jobs to 309 cleaners in Jabalpur Municipal Corporation anguished “them” (the casteist forces).
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Terming the then Lokayukta as casteist, Thete claimed that he had tried to implicate him in false cases through the Lokayukta trap and filed 25 cases against him. However, the Jabalpur High Court had quashed all charges against Thete. “And yet, they kept frivolous legal cases going against me, against established norms. When the High Court absolved me of all those charges, they framed my wife in a paid loan case of Apex Bank and made her my co-accused to prevent my promotion to the Principal Secretary’s post,” he said.
Ramesh Thete concludes the letter by saying that now he is "freed from shackles of slavery" and has the Constitution with him. “I am an artiste and have a pen with me and a lot of stories of the downtrodden,” he wrote.
Letter to CM
Earlier, on July 25, a week before his retirement, Thete had written to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan requesting him to promote him to the rank of Principal Secretary before retirement as it was long overdue.
“The casteist forces have not only conspired against me, but also trumped up false cases against me just to stop my promotion. Now, I’m free from all charges and am going to retire on July 31. Hence, promote me to the Principal Secretary’s post before my retirement and let justice prevail,” he had written in the letter to CM.
