At 11 pm on a Thursday, July 23, while thousands of students gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in an ongoing protest demanding the resignation of Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the government quietly transferred the secretary of the Department of Higher Education under the Ministry of Education and announced his replacement.
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) issued a notification transferring Vineet Joshi, a 1992-batch IAS officer, to the post of secretary in the Department of Panchayati Raj, and appointed IAS officer Naresh Pal Gangwar, an IAS officer of 1994 batch from West Bengal cadre, as the secretary of the Department of Higher Education. Gangwar previously headed the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying.
Gangwar has a BTec degree in electronics and communications from IIT, Roorkee, and also a Master’s degree in communication and radar engineering from IIT, Delhi. He also has a Master’s degree in economics from University of Rajasthan. Vineet Joshi, an IIT Kanpur graduate with a management degree from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, has been part of the education governance over the past decade and a half, occupying some of the most influential positions in India’s academic and examination architecture.
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The reshuffle is part of a wider bureaucratic reorganisation that also saw TK Anil Kumar take charge of the Department of School Education and Literacy.
The administrative reshuffle has also been accompanied by developments on the judicial front. A special fast-track mechanism has been established to deal with cases involving examination fraud and related offences under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024. The aim is to speed up legal proceedings in cases that usually take years to conclude.
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While the transfer of Vineet Joshi was expected by the government to assuage hot nerves among the students’ community across the country, Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), the main organisation spearheading the agitation in New Delhi interpreted it as a futile exercise.
“Government is rewarding corruption instead of ensuring accountability! Last night, the Education Secretary was transferred. He was replaced by an IAS officer from the Animal Husbandry Department who has severe multi-crore corruption charges against him. The entire crisis around paper leaks and NEET was about systemic corruption. Replacing one bureaucrat with another facing serious corruption allegations is a direct INSULT to young people across India. Is this the “compromise” the government expects us to accept? This is not accountability. We will not stop until Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns,” said CJP founding president Abhijit Dipke in an X post on Friday.
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Dipke also unleashed sarcasm on PM Narendra Modi for the latter’s assurance of “strict action” in matters such as examination paper leak. The CJP chief posted on X a photograph of a gate without fence on either side of it being locked by a man, with the caption “Strict action”.
