In an unusually sharp open letter addressed to serving members of the All India and Central Services, 98 former civil servants have warned that constitutional values in India are being openly breached and that democratic dialogue has virtually vanished, with any expression of dissent or difference of opinion being branded "anti-national." The letter, issued by the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) on 7 October 2026 and signed by retired officers of the IAS, IPS, IFS, IRS, IFoS and other services, tells civil servants in no uncertain terms that when orders from the political executive conflict with statutory provisions, their duty is to follow the law "in letter and spirit, even where it causes personal inconvenience."
The CCG, which describes itself as a collective of former civil servants that came into being nine years ago to uphold the primacy of constitutional values in India's polity and society, says it feels compelled to write at "a juncture in our country's history" when the values enshrined in the Constitution are being flouted. Through over a hundred letters, conclaves and seminars, the group has previously sought to sensitise the political class, the bureaucracy and the public to the need to observe constitutional values in all policies, actions and daily behaviour.
The immediate trigger for the letter appears to be the chain of events culminating in the violence of 20 July, when a youth protest at Jantar Mantar and an attempted march to Parliament were met with what the letter describes as police mishandling. "The Delhi Police, which saw a change in its Commissioner of Police only three days earlier, seemed to have both underestimated and overreacted to the crowd gathered for the march to Parliament," the letter states, adding that crowd control measures were "disproportionate to the situation on the ground" and that visual records suggest some policemen and officers "showed excessive enthusiasm in the use of force, viz. lathi charges, tear gas, pellet gun firing and other brutalities."
The signatories, among them former home secretary G.K. Pillai, former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, former NHRC secretary generals Satya Narayan Mohanty and P.S.S. Thomas, and former ambassadors Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, Deb Mukharji and Aftab Seth, argue that over the past decade the union government has rarely adopted dialogue to frame policies or resolve issues. They list the demonetisation "debacle," the rushed introduction of GST, the abrogation of Article 370, the CAA legislation, the aborted farm laws, the new criminal laws and the delimitation of constituencies, describing the NEET fiasco and its aftermath as "only the latest such aberration."
To drive home the responsibility of the civil services, the letter invokes Sardar Patel's advice to the first IAS recruits in 1947 and his speech in the Constituent Assembly in October 1949. Patel's words are quoted directly: "A civil servant cannot afford to and must not take part in politics, nor must he involve himself in communal wrangles. To depart from the path of rectitude in either of these respects is to debase public services and to lower its dignity." And, more pointedly: "If you do not give your honest opinion for fear that it will displease your minister, please then you had better go. I will bring another secretary. I will never be displeased over a frank expression of opinion."
The letter reserves its strongest criticism for the Election Commission of India, which it calls "the most glaring example of wilful disregard of constitutional ethics." Noting that the ECI currently consists entirely of former IAS officers, the CCG accuses the commission of introducing the arbitrarily designed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and using its constitutional authority to convert a routine administrative procedure "into a measure designed to exclude and disenfranchise millions of genuine voters for brazenly unconstitutional, partisan and political ends." The letter says the process had no precedent, no clear basis in law and no verified necessity, and alleges that by shifting the onus onto citizens to prove their legitimacy with documents few could access, overturning the natural presumption of citizenship, and introducing lineage as the basis of voting rights, the ECI ensured that the stated purpose of "purification" of the rolls "created panic and fear in large sections of the Indian population."
The CCG describes this as "a particularly egregious example of political partisanship perhaps unparalleled in the history of independent India," saying the officers involved have "not merely irreparably damaged the reputation of an institution built by their predecessors with assiduous care, but have damaged the very foundations of our electoral democracy." Referring to revelations published in The Indian Express regarding the unilateral functioning of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and his lieutenants, the letter says the two Election Commissioners "acquiesced for months" in the CEC's unilateral decisions despite the law empowering them, as the majority in the ECI, to insist their opinions prevail. It adds that their participation in the meeting of the three Commissioners on 26 September 2026 "not only exposes the flawed, indeed, illegal decisions taken earlier but also renders them liable to the charge of participating in a cover up of these decisions."
Beyond the ECI, the letter charges that AIS and Central Services officers in agencies such as the Income Tax department, Enforcement Directorate, CBI and Narcotics Control Bureau, as well as the police, "have been complicit in the unnecessary harassment of individuals and institutions deemed to be opposed to the government of the day." It notes that cases are registered under draconian laws such as the UAPA, PMLA and NDPS, with investigations "allowed to drag on interminably, with the process of justice itself becoming the punishment, given the ponderous movement of the judicial process and the onerous stipulations for grant of bail."
The CCG also singles out what it calls "the unedifying spectacle" of senior police and IAS officers in a state showering flower petals from a helicopter on Kanwar yatris, even as magistrates clamped down on meat shops and terrorised Muslim shop owners along the Kanwar routes into closing their establishments, "at the same time allowing Kanwar yatris to indulge in drunken revelries and attack members of the minority community with complete impunity." The letter states that incidents of communal hate speech and violence have "increased exponentially" in the last twelve years, with offshoots of the Sangh Parivar — the Bajrang Dal, the VHP and hundreds of local outfits — instigating unrest targeting Muslim and Christian communities, while "perpetrators of hate speech from the majority community are allowed a free run even when they make open calls for genocide." It notes that bulldozers continue to be used to selectively demolish the homes, properties and places of worship of minority communities despite Supreme Court orders, and cites the quashing of a number of NSA orders by the Allahabad High Court and fines imposed by the Supreme Court and the High Court on the Uttar Pradesh government and its officers, including the District Magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar district, as an indictment of arbitrary curbs on citizens' right to liberty. "Clearly, the time has come for stronger personal accountability and penalties for administrative and police excesses that violate the fundamental rights of citizens and the core values of the Constitution," the letter says.
On the environment, the group accuses some AIS officers of colluding with the political executive in the destruction of the natural environment over the last twelve years at tremendous cost to forest-dependent communities. It cites the 2023 amendments to the Forest (Conservation) Act and the 2020 changes to the 2006 EIA notification as having systematically dismantled the regulatory framework constructed by earlier governments, claiming the Ministry of Environment "has forsaken its regulatory role and has become a facilitator for big industry," evidenced by the fact that almost 98 per cent of submitted projects receive environmental clearance. The letter notes that between 2018 and 2022, the number of environmental, forest, wildlife and coastal zone clearances jumped twenty-fold, from 577 to over 12,000 in a single year, and refers scathingly to the EIA approvals for the Great Nicobar project and the failed attempt to open the Aravallis to mining and real estate.
The former officers are careful to say they do not claim the moral high ground and do not wish to lecture serving civil servants. They concede that erosion in strict adherence to constitutional principles began long before the present regime, and that "then, as now, the spineless outnumbered those who stood up for principles." But they mourn the loss of a peer culture in the civil services — the "esprit de corps" — and of the healthy respect once accorded to those who took a stand, and observe that today's serving officers work in an environment far less accommodative than the one their predecessors knew, one in which institutions like the judiciary and the media can no longer be taken for granted as fallback support at times of friction with the political establishment.
Closing with the appeal that gives the letter its title — "Your touchstone is the Constitution of India" — the CCG tells serving officers: "When there is a conflict between the orders given to you and the statutory provisions, your duty is to go strictly by the provisions of law in letter and spirit, even where it causes personal inconvenience." It offers a final assurance: "As your seniors in service, we will always support you in these endeavours." The letter ends with the national motto, "Satyameva Jayate," above the names of the 98 signatories.
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