Ex-IAS officer Anil Baijal appointed new Delhi LG

NEW DELHI: The CMD of Air India when one of its flights IC 814 flying from Nepal to Delhi was hijacked by terrorists and taken to Taliban-controlled Kandahar in 1999, Anil Baijal has been appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.

The post fell vacant last week after the abrupt resignation of Najeeb Jung.

Earlier, Home ministry officials said they had processed Jung's resignation and had sent the proposed names to the Prime Minister's Office on Monday night. The PMO had then sent it to Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Pranab Mukherjee last night approved the appointment of Anil Baijal as the Lt Governor of Delhi.

Home ministry officials said the other names that were considered and discussed for the post were of former bureaucratturned-administrator KJ Alphons and former Delhi police commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma.

Ajai Raj Sharma was the police commissioner of Delhi from July 1999 to June 2002 while Alphons, a Kerala cadre officer, is known for the demolition of illegal structures during his stint as the chief of Delhi Development Authority.

"The Centre is very clear that the appointment should not be entirely political and should be of someone who is skillful but sober administrator. The Centre doesn't want any more unnecessary noise over any disagreement with Kejriwal's government but someone, who focuses on the governance of Delhi as well, which has been ignored in the last year," a top official said, adding that officials from both home ministry and PMO were consulted to choose the best officer for the job.

Top officials at the Centre said the only reservation that came up with the Baijal's appointment was his being an officer from the Union Territories cadre.

Baijal had been a member of the executive council of the Vivekananda International Foundation, a New Delhi-based thinktank that had many of its fellows appointed to senior positions in the Narendra Modi government.

"In fact he was among the earliest members of the foundation responsible for its working in the initial years," a senior member of the foundation said. Largely known as an "upright and an able," old timers in the party also remember a certain instance when Baijal, as the civil aviation secretary shown the door to a certain minister when he asked him to do a task that was not was right.

Baijal was the CMD of Air India during the hijack of IC 814 wherein NSA Ajit Doval as part of the Intelligence Bureau had played an important role in the negotiations with the terrorists who had demanded release of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar in order to release the passengers of the plane.