In an extraordinary move, a suspended IAS officer has sent a letter to the Kerala Chief Secretary seeking an explanation regarding the charge memo issued to him. This is the first time an IAS officer dared to question the government’s disciplinary action. Prasanth, in his tenure as Agriculture Department special secretary, was suspended from service on November 11 for his social media remarks against Additional Chief Secretary A Jayathilak, as well as former Director of Industries K Gopalakrishnan.

Immediately after the suspension, Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan issued a charge memo to Pasanth as part of a departmental inquiry. However, instead of replying to the memo, Prasanth sent a letter with seven questions to Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan. Prashanth’s stance is that he would reply to the charge memo only if he gets a clarification on the points raised by him in his letter to the chief secretary. The primary query in the letter highlights why he was not given an opportunity to present his side of the story before suspension proceedings were initiated.

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In his letter to Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan, Prasanth demanded a valid reason for his suspension, emphasising that neither Jayathilak nor Gopalakrishnan had filed a complaint against him regarding the so-called controversial social media posts His seven ‘key questions’ to the government are as follows..

Why did the government not give me the opportunity to provide an explanation before issuing the suspension order? Jayathilak and Gopalakrishnan have not filed any complaint against my Facebook posts. Then what is the logic behind the government issuing the memo on its own? Who collected the screenshots of my Facebook posts that were included with the charge memo?

From which government official’s account was this collected? Which official was assigned this task? Name the social media account from which my posts were collected. Why did the government include screenshots shared by a private party in the charge memo?… Did the government examine the social media pages under the IT Act and verify that they were not fake?