Behind the scene? Ex-IAS, now Modi man in Yogi Cabinet, who lined up Mahakumbh VVIP comforts for Gujarat colleagues

The other day, I was talking to a senior IAS official about whether he or his colleagues had traveled to the recently concluded Mahakumbh in Allahabad, which was renamed Prayagraj by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as part of his intense Hindutva drive. He refused to reveal any names but said he had not gone there "despite arrangements for Gujarat cadre IAS officials" at the Mahakumbh VVIP site. "The water is too dirty—why take the risk?" he asked.

This led me to suspect: Did AK Sharma, who resigned from the IAS 18 months ahead of his retirement in January 2021 to join the BJP, make the required arrangements in the VVIP enclave? And I was proven right. Sharma, who served as secretary to Narendra Modi in Gujarat until 2014 before moving to Delhi, personally called several serving and retired bureaucrats from Gujarat, inviting them to the Mahakumbh and assuring them that he would make all the necessary arrangements.

Rumored to become UP's deputy chief minister but ultimately settling for the energy minister’s post, Sharma—whom I frequently interacted with during my stint in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital, as the Times of India representative—is known among his Gujarat colleagues as a very polite and amenable person, easy to talk to. However, unlike other bureaucrats, he would rarely speak off the record to provide me with information.

Yet, on at least two occasions, Sharma gave me stories that made headlines in TOI’s Gandhinagar edition. One of them was the state government’s decision to drop the much-hyped but ultimately unfeasible Dholera port project, which the Adani and JK groups were reportedly planning to develop.

Standing just outside the Chief Minister’s office, I saw Gautam Adani coming out. I asked him, "What brought you here?" Adani, who had just met Sharma, responded, "They have decided not to go ahead with the Dholera port. The suspense is finally over..."

That was a major story. In TOI, we had consistently reported that the Gujarat government aimed to develop Dholera—just about a hundred kilometers from Ahmedabad—into a major industrial investment hub by planning an all-weather port, an international airport, and a smart city with modern facilities in the vicinity.

The hype around all of it, in typical Modi style—reflected in TOI stories by my colleagues in Ahmedabad and backed by me in Gandhinagar—had already turned Dholera into a real estate haven. Land prices had skyrocketed, and there was a rush by investors eager to buy land in the area to make a quick buck. The propaganda was so intense that Dholera was being sold as "India’s Singapore in the making!"

I immediately rushed to Sharma to confirm what Adani had just told me. He admitted that a port in Dholera was not feasible. The reason he cited was the decision to develop a "smaller Kalpasar" project—a plan to create a freshwater lake by damming the Gulf of Khambhat and filling it with Narmada waters. Once implemented, the project would prevent ships from reaching the proposed Dholera port.

I wrote the story, which was published as a TOI flier. However, I later discovered the real reason: A port at Dholera was never viable because of massive underwater sand dunes in the Gulf of Khambhat, which would have prevented large ships from reaching the port anyway. Additionally, the tidal range across the Gulf varies between 8.96 meters and 13.33 meters, with an average of 10.7 meters—one of the highest in the world—making navigation extremely difficult.

Ironically, even today, Dholera, which remains largely barren, is still being marketed as a future smart city. I recently read that an expressway to Dholera is nearing completion, and plans for an international airport off Dholera are in full swing. I don’t know how much all of this will cost the state’s coffers, but a feasibility report I had covered earlier stated that a large part of Dholera, which gets submerged during monsoons, would require an average of 10 feet of sand for reclamation.

Be that as it may, the other major story that Sharma played a key role in was related to a nearly 1,000-page hardbound report titled Blueprint for Infrastructure: Gujarat 2020 (BIG-2020), which he handed to me upon its publication. Scanning through its pages the same day, I found a project proposal that caught my attention: a plan to develop a casino near Dholavira, India’s best-preserved Harappan site!

Maheshwar Sahu, HK Dash

I wrote a story, published as a flier under the headline “Now, a Las Vegas in dry Gujarat”. It clearly embarrassed Sharma, who had overseen the report’s preparation. The very next day, he recalled all copies of BIG-2020 that had been distributed to colleagues across the Gandhinagar Secretariat. He retrieved them, pasted a white slip over the page containing the casino reference, and sent them back. The CDs containing the report were destroyed and reissued with the necessary amendments.

Since my retirement from TOI, I have neither met nor contacted Sharma, though I continue to see news about him as a key Modi man in the Yogi government. When I learned that he was inviting IAS officers—both retired and still serving—to the Mahakumbh and ensuring VVIP arrangements for them, I inquired further. At least two retired IAS officers accepted the invitation and traveled to Prayagraj: HK Dash and Maheshwar Sahu, both from the 1980 batch.

While Dash never held particularly high-profile positions, Sahu served as Gujarat’s industries secretary and played a key role in organizing one of the high-profile Vibrant Gujarat global business summits during Modi’s tenure as chief minister. Upon their return, both officials told Secretariat colleagues that their holy dip had been a deeply spiritual experience.

I don’t know if Sharma arranged their flights to Prayagraj and back. However, I do know that another retired IAS official declined to travel by plane because it was "too costly."

In a blog post upon his return, this third ex-IAS officer, PK Parmar—a Dalit—wrote that he and his wife opted for a Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation tourist bus, specially arranged for Mahakumbh travel. The round-trip cost was Rs 8,200, he noted, explaining that he chose this option because airfare had skyrocketed fivefold.

Parmar’s blog does not mention whether he received an invitation from Sharma or whether he stayed in the VVIP enclave like Dash and Sahu—though it appears he did not.