Former Home Secretary GK Pillai hits out at RK Singh for charges against Sushil Kumar Shinde

NEW DELHI: Former Home Secretary and one of India’s most respected bureaucrats G K Pillai has ticked off his successor RK Singh for criticising Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, saying it was in bad form to voice such criticism after demitting office.

“In my personal view, a bureaucrat should do something in matters like these and take it up at the right level while he is in service and then be prepared to take the consequences of the same. He should certainly not do this after retirement, or when he has joined politics. In my personal view, this incident should not have happened like this,” Pillai told ET.

The former home secretary, who oversaw the country’s internal security when P Chidambaram held charge of the ministry, pointed out that the Union Home Ministry was a “very sensitive” ministry. “In that respect too, this incident is quite unprecedented,” he said.

Pillai was succeeded by Singh at North Block on July 1, 2011. Singh served for 13 months under Chidambaram and another 11 months under Shinde.

Singh, who joined BJP on December 13 last year, had alleged on Monday that then Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar had told him that Shinde protected a businessmen linked to Dawood Ibrahim from being probed by the police in the IPL spot-fixing scam and also influenced postings in Delhi Police.

Shinde has not reacted to this so far while Kumar told ET on Tuesday that he would “not like to comment”.