Buckling under mounting pressure from the Opposition, the BJP-led Maharashtra Government on Monday transferred an IAS officer Nidhi Choudhari for her controversial tweet on Mahatma Gandhi in which she “glorified” his killer Nathuram Godse.
In a development that came after the Opposition Congress and NCP rooted for action against the controversial officer, the Maharashtra Government shifted Choudhari, a 2012 batch IAS officer, from her post as a Joint Municipal Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to a relatively insignificant position as a deputy secretary in the State Water Supply and Sanitation Department.
Among others, NCP president Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra Congress president Ashok Chavan had urged Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to initiate stern action against Choudhari.
Choudhary has also been served a show-cause notice to explain her controversial tweet of May 17, 2019.
In her 17 May tweeted, she had stated, “What an exceptional celebration of 150th birth anniversary year is going on...High time, we remove is face from out currency, his statues from across the world, rename institutions/roads named after him! That would be a real tribute to all of us! ThankU #Godse”.
However, Choudhary claimed that she had deleted the tweet on May 31, saying that it was against those glorifying Godse — and it was “sarcastic”.
“I have deleted my tweet of 17.05.2019 w.r.t. GandhiJi because some people misunderstood it. If only they had followed my timeline since 2011 they would’ve understood that I would NEVER even dream of insulting GandhiJi. I bow before him with deepest regard & will do till last breath,” she tweeted.
“I feel extremely pained at the manner in which it has been misrepresentated…” she later wrote in a Facebook post.
Senior NCP legislator Jitendra Awhad made an issue of Choudhari’s tweet on Saturday last.
Following an uproar, Pawar wrote to Chief Minister Fadnavis the same night, demanding “exemplary punishment” for Choudhari who had insulted a national icon by her remarks and also sought to glorify Gandhiji’s assassin Nathuram Godse.
In his letter to Fadnavis, Pawar stated: “If the Government doesn’t take action it would be deemed that its policy and intention has reached its lowest ebb....A government official in a progressive state like Maharashtra making such insulting comments against Mahatma Gandhi, and the state government turning a blind eye to it is a serious matter”.
Demanding stern action against Choudhari, Chavan said: “The tweet is condemnable. It only shows her low thinking. The need of the hour is to stop such a thought...The government has to show whether it is with Gandhi’s ideology or that of Godse”.
In a damage-control exercise undertaken ahead of the monsoon session of the Maharashtra Legislature, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance government summarily transferred Choudhari from a key post in the BMC to a relatively in significant post in Mantralaya, the state secretariat.
All the same, the Opposition Congress and NCP is bound to make issue of the Choudari-Godse controversy during the monsoon session of the State Legislature.