A group of 91 former civil servants, in a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah and Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar, have demanded legal and administrative action against Sudarshan channel.
The channel ran a trailer of a news series alleging a conspiracy in the recruitment process for IAS and the IPS which it claims has ensured a spike in the number of Muslim officers. For now, the Delhi High Court has granted an interim stay on the telecast.
“We feel stronger legal and administrative action is warranted. It is completely perverse to allege that there is a conspiracy to infiltrate Muslim officers into the services, or to use terms like UPSC Jihad or Civil Services Jihad in this connection. These communal and irresponsible statements amount to hate speech and are defamatory of an entire community,” the bureaucrats wrote in the letter.
If the telecast is allowed, the bureaucrats said, it will only generate hatred towards the largest minority community. It will also, the letter says, tar the impeccable reputation of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). “UPSC’s recruitment processes are widely recognised as being entirely fair, above board and without any bias towards any language, region, religion or other community,” the letter said.
The letter pointed out that the claim made by Sudarshan TV is not factual. As per the data with the DOPT, Muslims make up only 3.46% of the IAS and IPS force. The group said the allegations are unfounded, because there were batches where not a single Muslim candidate was selected for the IAS.
A copy of the letter has also been marked to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Lt. Governor Anil Baijal and Delhi Police Commissioner S.N. Shrivastava.