Chandigarh, June 29
Haryana IAS officers were pleasantly surprised today when the Centre announced the appointment of Dr S.Y. Quraishi as the Election Commissioner of India, particularly after two of their colleagues were literally cheated out of the post of Cabinet Secretary recently. Their claim to the coveted post was defeated when one-year
extension was granted to the present incumbent.
Dr Quraishi’s appointment has been particularly welcomed by the Haryana bureaucracy because there is hardly an officer of the state who can claim to nurse a genuine grievance against him.
A 1971-batch IAS officer, Dr Quraishi is known for his unimpeachable integrity. He would not accept gifts even from his colleagues on festivals like Id and Divali, when exchanging gifts is an accepted practice.
Once, when he was Resident Commissioner of Haryana in Delhi, he sent a special messenger to return a gift left for him by an MLA on a festival.
Those who have worked closely with him vouch for his courage to give his frank opinion even before a tough and rough political master. Of course, he believes that in a democracy the final decision lies with elected representatives of the people. But this will not deter him from expressing his views even on an issue, on which he would know what particular action his political bosses wanted.
Dr Quraishi is the delight of media persons.
He would never avoid them. Therefore, the media can expect him to be very open as the Election Commissioner, a post, which he will be the first IAS officer of Haryana to hold.
Born on June 11, 1947, in Delhi, Dr Quraishi is at present the Secretary, Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. He has held several key positions, including that of Special Secretary (Health) & Director General of the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), the Director-General, Doordarshan, the Director-General of Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, the country’s largest rural youth development agency, and earlier to this as Director, Women and Child Development. He founded the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development at Sriperumbudur (TN) and was its Director from 1993 to 1997. He was the team leader in framing India’s National Perspective Plan for Youth-2020 and mainstreaming gender issues.
Dr Quraishi is an expert on gender and HIV/AIDS and is known for his extensive work in the field of population, Women and Child Development, particularly ICDS, youth, adolescent and health-related issues. UN and other international organisations have availed the expertise of Dr Quraishi in these fields.
A post-graduate in history, he did his Ph.D in the areas of communication and social marketing. The title of his doctoral thesis was “The Role of Communication and Social Marketing in Development of Women and Children”. His book ‘Social Marketing for Social Change’ has broken new ground in the field of development communication and is considered as a pioneering effort with special reference to women and children.
He has authored two path-breaking papers, “Islam, Muslims and Family Planning in India’, and “Islam & AIDS”.
As a Consultant to UNICEF, he developed an approach and strategy paper for the ‘Draft National Plan on Youth in the Service of Children’ that extensively covered gender issues. The UNFPA nominated him as a Specialist and Resource Person for the International Conference on Islam and Family Planning at Ankara, 1995.
Apart
from his intellectual qualities, his friends hold him in high esteem for his human qualities.
