Former AIIMS CVO Sanjiv Chaturvedi, one of the winners of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award this year, has accused the institute and the Union health ministry of humiliating and deliberately discr
Former AIIMS CVO Sanjiv Chaturvedi, one of the winners of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award this year, has accused the institute and the Union health ministry of humiliating and deliberately discriminating against him by refusing to accept the donation of his award money.
Mr Chaturvedi had donated the award money of $30,000 ('19,85,187 as per exchange rate prevailing at that time) into the AIIMS account in September for treatment of poor patients.
In a letter written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, Mr Chaturvedi, who is a deputy secretary at AIIMS, expressed unhappiness that even over two months after he had donated the award money, it had not been transferred to the AIIMS account.
He has now donated the sum to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. “I am not interested in any further tussle with health ministry/AIIMS on this purely humanitarian issue and so that the amount could be used for the welfare of the needy people without any further delay,” he said in the letter.
Mr Chaturvedi claimed that Union health minister J.P. Nadda was intentionally sabotaging the process to accept his donation for AIIMS “just to negate his contribution.”
He claimed that the Union minister is settling scores with him for exposing one of his protégés in 2013.
“All the humiliation inflicted upon me, and the discriminatory treatment meted out, by way of delay/denial to deposit the award money into AIIMS account, is a direct result of personal annoyance of Mr J.P. Nadda, who had launched a persistent campaign against me right from May 2013 when I had initiated an inquiry into corruption cases against one of his protégé officers and whose departmental chargesheet health minister is sitting for the past one year despite approvals of former health minister, Dr Harshvardhan, and clear cut recommendations of the CBI,” he alleged in the letter, a copy of which is with this newspaper.
“The unwillingness in my case is clear from the fact that in no other case of any private donor the matter was referred to the (Union) health ministry and contribution was immediately deposited into the institute’s account.”
Describing honest civil servants as victims of intolerance, he wrote: “The tragedy with public discourse in our country has been that it has focused on non-issues like religious tolerance rather than issues regarding health, sanitation, education, energy and environment.”
“The real problem of intolerance is that of establishment towards honesty and honest civil servants across the country where they have been harassed and humiliated through abuse of power. In present times, being an honest, law abiding and independent minded civil servant has become the most dangerous and difficult proposition.”
The anti-corruption crusader alleged that discrimination against him is so much that he is not being allowed to work at all. “This is an ironical situation where system is so much afraid of honesty of its own officer that it does not want him to work at all, fearing action and exposure of their misdeeds.”
Donating the award amount to the Prime Minister National Relief Fund, Mr Chaturvedi requested Mr Modi “to bring to an end this culture of intolerance and untouchability, being practised against honest and law abiding civil servants.”
Mr Chaturvedi also sought a personal appointment with Mr Modi so that he could convey his “mann ki baat” on the plight of honest civil servants in the country.
