Skip to main content

Gujarat bureaucrat Aloria, "instrumental" in seeking inquiry against Ford Foundation, made state chief secretary

Pandian with Aloria
By A Representative
The Gujarat government on Saturday appointed GR Aloria, a 1981 batch IAS bureaucrat, as new state secretary. The posting comes weeks after Gujarat home department under him wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, seeking inquiry into the American philanthropic organization Ford Foundation’s grants to NGOs run by human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, fighting tens of 2002 communal riots cases, even as highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s complicity.
Aloria has been holding charge of the state home department along with urban development department. Previously, he was with the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd, the state agency implementing the Narmada project. He has worked as municipal commissioner in several Gujarat cities.
Close to Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, a known Modi protégé, Aloria as head of the state home department, his colleagues recall, was also “instrumental” helping draft the controversial Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organized Crime (GCTOC) Bill, currently pending Presidential accent.
A stricter avatar a similar Bill, rejected by the previous Gujarat governor thrice, GCTOC’s contentious provisions are admissibility of evidence collected through telephonic interception and confession before police officer as evidence in court, and time limit of six months to file charge sheet. Already, GCTOC has under sharp criticism from several top civil rights organizations, including Amnesty International (click HERE to read), apart from the Opposition Congress.
Other recent “contributions” of Aloria’s tenure in home department, say bureaucrats, include triggering reinstatement of some of the key Gujarat cops, whose name appeared in Gujarat’s highly debated fake encounter cases. These include PP Pandey, posted as additional director-general, law and order; Geetha Johri, who was ranked director general of police; and Vipul Agrawal, posted as managing director, Gujarat Medical Services Corporation Limited, a state government undertaking.
As predicted by Counterview in January 2015 (click HERE to read), D Jagatheesa Pandian, who is senior batchmate of Aloria, failed to get the much-expected extension. The reasons include, say bureaucrats, his alleged failure to keep political masters, particularly state energy minister Saurabh Patel, de facto No 2 in Gujarat Cabinet, happy. Criticisms kept piling up against him for “misguiding” the political bosses about premier state sector undertaking Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation’s (GSPC’s), ability to continue with oil-and-gas explorations.
Pandian served as head of the GSPC for a decade before he was posted as state energy secretary in Sachivalaya in 2009, and later as state industries secretary. Made Gujarat chief secretary on November 1, 2014, he came under heavy internal criticism for creating “hype” around a huge 20 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in explorations by GSPC in the Krishna Godavari (KG) Basin, off Andhra Pradesh coast.
While Modi, as Gujarat chief minister, made a big show of 20 tcf gas in 2005 declaring how GSPC had turned into the biggest oil-and-gas-exploration company of India under him, bureaucrats say, the fault wasn’t entirely Pandian’s. Modi himself “decided” on the 20 tcf figure in an internal meeting, even as then state energy secretary Balwant Singh, backed by Pandian, kept saying this wasn’t so.
The actual gas found in KG Basin, it was revealed, was just about 2 tcf, of which just one-third was recoverable. Worse, under Pandian’s stewardship, and on Modi’s insistence, GSPC went “multinational”, kickstarting oil-and-gas exploration in Australia, Egypt, Yemen and Indonesia.
If foreign fields were dropped a couple of years ago because they were causing a huge drain on the state coffers, Gujarat government decided to “systematically withdraw” from the KG Basin, which cost the exchequer a whopping Rs 13,000 crore, in April this year.
Meanwhile, Gujarat officials said, Aloria left “no stone unturned in pleasing the powers that be”, including Modi, when he was chief minister till May 2014, and later his successor Anandiben Patel. While he was already heading urban development, he was simultaneously made in charge of the crucial home department in November 2014. Both urban development and home are directly handled by the Gujarat chief minister.
Aloria, it is said, was one of the most active backstage organizers of the two high-profile events which took place in Gandhinagar with the direct participation of Modi – the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, on January 7, followed by the Vibrant Gujarat business meet of January 11.
Unlike many other colleagues, Aloria meticulously kept his political bosses informed about every detail what all was happening in the babudom, and which babu thinks what. “He did this under Modi and continued it later. In doing so, he was performing his normal duty”, a senior official, who is known to be close to Aloria, said.

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan  In a groundbreaking  study  spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.
Post a Comment
»

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram  India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.
Post a Comment
»

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra  Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today. 
Post a Comment
»

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.
59 comments
»

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra*  The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.
Post a Comment
»

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah*  ​A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards . 
Post a Comment
»

The war on junk food: Why India must adopt global warning labels

By Jag Jivan    The global health landscape is witnessing a decisive shift toward aggressive regulation of the food industry, a movement highlighted by two significant policy developments shared by Dr. Arun Gupta of the Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi). 
Post a Comment
»

The illusion of nuclear abundance: Why NTPC’s expansion demands public scrutiny

By Shankar Sharma*  The recent news that NTPC is scouting 30 potential sites across India for a massive nuclear power expansion should be a wake-up call for every citizen. While the state-owned utility frames this as a bold stride toward a 100,000 MW nuclear capacity by 2047, a cold look at India’s nuclear saga over the last few decades suggests this ambition may be more illusory than achievable. More importantly, it carries implications that could fundamentally alter the safety, environment, and economic health of our communities.
Post a Comment
»

Madhav Gadgil: The ecologist who taught India to listen to nature

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  Among the exceptional individuals who laid the intellectual and scientific foundations of environmental conservation in India—and challenged the dominant development discourse—Professor Madhav Dhondo Keshav Gadgil stands as a towering figure. He was not only a pioneering ecologist, but also among the first to view environmental protection through the lens of democracy, local communities and social justice.
Post a Comment
»