5 months to retire, Khemka finally gets ‘significant’ dept

Senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka, known for his uprightness during his over 33-year career and 57 postings, has after a gap of many years been given a posting in a ‘significant’ department but that comes only five months before his retirement.

The 1991-batch officer, who was Additional Chief Secretary, Printing and Stationery Department, was on Sunday transferred and posted as ACS, Transport Department relieving 1994 batch IPS officer Navdeep Vrik of the charge. Khemka retires on April 30, 2025.

He returned to the transport department, which is currently being handled by Minister Anil Vij, nearly 10 years after he was transferred out as transport commissioner, in the first term of the then BJP government which was headed by Manohar Lal Khattar.

At that time, Khemka had barely served for four months in the transport department. As transport commissioner then, Khemka had refused to issue fitness certificates to over-sized trucks and trailers for transporting automobiles and white goods leading to a truckers' strike in January.

Later, the truckers in the state withdrew their strike after the state government gave them one year's time to get their vehicles modified according to the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), 1989.

“Tried hard to address corruption and bring reforms in Transport despite severe limitations and entrenched interests. Moment is truly painful," Khemka had then said in a tweet 10 years ago, after he was moved to Archaeology and Museums Department by the then state government.

The Haryana-cadre IAS officer came to national limelight in 2012 when he cancelled the mutation of a Gurugram land deal linked to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.

Last year, Khemka had written to the then Chief Minister Khattar and offered to "root out corruption" with a stint in the vigilance department.

In his letter, Khemka -- whose professional life has been marked by frequent transfers, often to insignificant departments -- had said he had sacrificed his service career in his zeal to end corruption.