Suspended IAS officer meets secretary to Akhilesh Yadav

IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, whose suspension by UP Government has sparked a controversy amid allegations that she was targeted for taking on the powerful sand mafia, on Friday met the Secretary to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Nagpal had a meeting with the Secretary to the CM, Anita Singh, for almost an hour at Lal Bahadur Shastri Bhawan and gave her side of story, but the exact details of the meeting were not known, official sources said.

A 2010-batch IAS officer, Nagpal was served the suspension order on July 27 ostensibly for demolishing the wall of a mosque in Gautam Budh Nagar.

UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had stoutly defended Nagpal's suspension, saying her action to demolish the wall of a religious place had "vitiated" communal harmony.

He had also clarified that there was no connection between sand mining and government's action against her.

Nagpal's suspension, opposition parties alleged, was done under pressure of the "mining mafia", a charge denied by the state government.

Nagpal had launched a crackdown on the "mining mafia" in Gautam Buddha Nagar in Noida and was in the news for curbing illegal mining activities in the district by getting over two dozen FIR registered against those involved in illegal sand mining.

Special flying squads were formed by the officer to stop the raging menace along Yamuna and Hindon rivers in Western UP.

The Oppositiom today demanded that the CM step down following Samajwadi Party leader Narinder Bhati's controversial claim in a video that he got the IAS officer suspended in "41 minutes".

The Allahabad High Court, meanwhile, sought a reply from the Centre and the state government on the illegal mining issue but declined to interfere in the suspension matter of the IAS officer.