Land scandals, encroachments, tracing Bhatia's toughest exposés

Arun Bhatia, a former Maharashtra cadre IAS officer, built his career around facing corruption inside the government rather than playing it down. Bhatia trained at St Stephen’s College and Cambridge. He served in the civil service for 26 years and became known for exposing irregularities in public schemes, land, and illegal construction. But fighting back was not without price: he was eventually transferred 26 times, or about once a year. He came into conflict with political and administrative interests on a regular basis.

Bhatia was one of the early whistle-blowers in Indian bureaucracy long before such figures as Ashok Khemka became popular for exposing land issues. One of his first actions was in Dhulia district in 1982, when he exposed corruption in the Employment Guarantee Scheme. He found serious irregularities in a programme that provides employment and support to people in need. This pattern of questioning the system would follow him throughout his career.

His last two battles for land were about land and construction. When Bhatia was Collector of Bombay, he exposed land scandals involving the IAS officers in the sultans, and as Commissioner of the Pune Municipal Corporation he dealt with illegal construction and encroachments. His campaign also targeted builders and politicians, making it politically sensitive.

Bhatia’s dismissal from the post of Pune municipal commissioner followed another example of the pressure on his job. Chief Minister Narayan Rane justified Bhatia’s removal by pointing out that Bhatia had violated procedural rules while carrying out demolitions. But public sentiment in Pune was clearly not impressed, with Bhatia leading protests after his removal. To many, this was less about procedure, but about whether an officer trying to enforce rules had been punished for confronting powerful interests. It made his fight against illegal construction into a debate about political influence.

Bhatia's interest was not restricted to land or construction. In his post as Commissioner of the Tribal Research and Training Institute in Maharashtra, he also investigated tribal communities and the implementation of welfare schemes. Surveys conducted in Nandurbar and Thane looked at deaths related to malnutrition and found that there were high levels of malnutrition among surviving siblings. He also looked into welfare schemes and found financial irregularities and poor implementation.

These findings again put Bhatia at odds with the government. After asking the government why children dying in tribal homes died because of malnutrition, he was sent a show-cause notice. He did not care about statistics, but about how the government ran its programs and whether they reached those they were supposed to help. By challenging the official explanations, he once again showed his confrontational nature with the government.

The fracturing eventually led Bhatia to call out the weaknesses of the IAS in unusually direct terms. Bhatia has declared that the IAS is one of India's corrupt institutions. He has said that it is not enough to say that an officer is honest. Honesty needs to be enforced through action and facing the system. Many corrupt officials he exposed have been protected, he has argued, which explains why his own career was marred by multiple transfers and bad posts.

The pressure from the political class grew so strong that Bhatia spent about eight years with the United Nations. He got away from the conflicts in his administrative career, but it did not put an end to his desire for change. After leaving the IAS, he joined politics, taking his anti-corruption drive outside of the bureaucracy.

In 2004, Bhatia, as an independent candidate, received more than 60,000 votes for the Lok Sabha seat of Pune, even without an organisational backbone. For the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Bhatia also challenged Suresh Kalmadi and founded his political party, the People's Guardian Party (PGP). His foray into politics showed that his critique of the system was no longer limited to his profession as a civil servant.

He also poses the intriguing question of why officers who begin their service with a high degree of idealism become more cautious and conformist with the passage of time. Civil servants who have served and retired have described the challenges of the bureaucracy, including the threat of losing their ability to serve if they oppose political bosses. Bhatia's case is unique. Instead of breaking, he challenged bureaucratic pressure several times when it meant that he was subjected to transfer, excluded from appointments, or punished by the government.

It is interesting to compare D. Roopa Moudgil to D. Bhatia because both were well-known for divulging wrongdoing and found themselves liable to transfers or institutional pressure, even though they were from different generations and services. Bhatia, on the other hand, was of an earlier generation of bureaucrats who disclosed wrongdoing and illustrates the difficulties faced by officers who confront powerful interests in the government.

What makes Arun Bhatia's career notable is not simply the number of times he was transferred or the scandals he exposed. It is the consistency of his approach across different assignments. From employment schemes and land deals to illegal construction and tribal welfare, he repeatedly questioned whether government power was being used for the public good. His career shows how difficult it can be for a civil servant to confront entrenched interests, but also how one officer's actions can force hidden problems into public view.

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