IAS officer who thrashed Unnao journalist was also part of controversial mosque demolition 

Lucknow: IAS officer Divyanshu Patel, caught on camera assaulting a video journalist and smashing the latter’s mobile phone in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao during block panchayat polls, is no stranger to controversy. 

In May, Patel, a 2017-batch sub-divisional magistrate in Barabanki, had passed orders for the controversial demolition of a mosque in the town. Muslim bodies had then said the demolition was “against the law” as the structure was the property of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board.

Following the row, he was moved out to his current post as the chief development officer (CDO) at Unnao. 

ThePrint attempted to contact Patel on his phone for a comment on this report but it was not reachable. ThePrint also tried to contact Unnao Superintendent of Police S.R. Kulkarni but his phone was also not reachable.

UP Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal, however, told ThePrint that the government has sought a report on the incident.  

“The government has asked for a detailed report from the Unnao district magistrate on the matter. Further action to be taken after it,” Sehgal said. 

Also read: Clashes in 17 districts, ‘cops attacked, women harassed’ — how UP polls erupted in violence

A JNU, DU alum

A resident of UP’s Balrampur, Patel has an MA in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University and MEd from Delhi University. In 2012, he was selected as an Assistant commandant in CRPF but did not join. His father, A.P. Verma, is a professor of Sanskrit in Balrampur.

Government sources who didn’t wish to be named told ThePrint that Patel is now seen as being close to BJP leaders. However, since the assault, videos and screenshots of tweets that have surfaced on social media purportedly show the officer was once vehemently anti-RSS.  

A purported video of the officer, from his student days at JNU, has gone viral. It shows him giving a media byte to NDTV denouncing casteism and Brahminism. 

Patel had closed his Twitter account following the Barabanki controversy, but in 2019 the IAS officer allegedly tweeted that an organisation (RSS) that was once banned “should not talk utter rubbish”. 

He was responding to a Times of India report, which quoted RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as saying that the organisation would proceed with the Ram Temple in Ayodhya irrespective of who was in power. 

The officer had also taken on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while championing reservation. Patel had in January 2019 allegedly tweeted that, according to the Indira Sawhney case, reservation cannot be on the basis of economic criteria. “Poor Modi, he is so desperate that he has not even read the basics,” the IAS officer had purportedly tweeted. 

According to a source in the government, Patel enjoys good ties with the BJP’s OBC leaders, particularly one senior leader. “Due to this, no action was taken against him during the Barabanki mosque controversy. He was in fact rewarded with the post of CDO in Unnao,” the source said. 

His latest actions have, however, drawn flak from serving and retired civil servants. 

“I am ashamed of this unruly behaviour. A Few similar incidents have also been reported in the past from different parts of the country,” former UP-cadre IAS officer Surya Pratap said. “The LBSNAA (Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration) needs to relook its training process before it’s too late.”

“Mr CDO your behaviour reeks of high handedness and arrogance. I totally condemn this. This is not the way an officer is supposed to treat people. These incidents bring a bad name to the service. Shameful,” tweeted Supriya Sahu, the Tamil Nadu principal secretary of environment & forests and a former Doordarshan director general. 

(Edited by Arun Prashanth)

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