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Bhopal: Tainted Dalit IAS officer Shashi Karnawat who was terminated from services last year over corruption charges, joined the Congress party on Tuesday. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh had recommended her termination to the Centre, following which she was sacked.
Karnawat was extended primary membership of the Congress after her meeting with the MP PCC president Kamal Nath on Tuesday morning. In the past, Karnawat had shared the stage with Congress leaders on several occasions after being kicked out of the civil services ranks.
The former IAS officer had openly vowed to uproot the Bharatiya Janata Party from power in Madhya Pradesh.
Expressing gratitude towards senior Congress leaders, including Kamal Nath, Karnawat mentioned former Union minister Suresh Pachauri saying, “Pachauri Ji told me that being snatched of a livelihood does not mean the end of life and asked me to start life afresh.”
For one reason or the other, the 1999 batch IAS officer would always make the headlines during her days in service before she was finally dismissed in 2017.
While she was posted in district Mandla district as the Zila Panchayat Chief Executive Officer from 1999 to 2000, her name surfaced in the Rs 32 lakh printing scam. She was also jailed in 2013 following orders from a court in Mandla.
Soon after being released from jail, Karnawat started spewing venom against the BJP government while threatening self-immolation on occasions.
She had even written to PM Narendra Modi alleging ill-treatment at the hands of the state government for being a Dalit officer.
She had also announced that she would take sanyas.
Meanwhile, Congress, which is going all out to woo Dalits, wasted no time in embracing Karnawat.
Sources however claim that Karnawat who alongside another controversial Dalit IAS officer Ramesh Thete had polarized the MP bureaucracy in groups of Dalit and anti-Dalits, could prove to be a burden for the Congress.
Besides, her graft tainted past could also offer BJP another salvo to attack the Congress.
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