Shah Faesal returns to bureaucracy: Kashmiri IAS officer Shah Faesal, who quit politics in 2019 by resigning from the bureaucracy to form his own political party, has been appointed as Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Culture.
Sources said that the decision to appoint him in the ministry was approved by the Center on Thursday. The Indian Express had reported on 29 April that Faesal had been withdrawn to the Indian Administrative Service and was likely to be posted in New Delhi following the approval of the Home Ministry.
Shah Faesal returns to bureaucracy
Notably, Faesal’s resignation was never accepted by the government and he later withdrew it.
In April, in a series of tweets, Faesal had also hinted at his reinstatement as he talked about being “one more chance” and “excited to start again”.
“The eight months of my life (January 2019-August 2019) made so much stuff that I was almost exhausted. Chasing a fantasy, I lost almost everything that I had built up over the years. Work. Friend, reputation, public goodwill, But I never lost hope. My idealism had let me down,” he had tweeted.
“But I believed in myself. That I would undo the mistakes I made. That life would give me another chance. A part of me is tired of the memory of those 8 months and wants to erase that legacy. A lot of it.” Gone. I am sure that time will wipe out the rest,”he said.
Commenting that “life is beautiful”, Faisal further wrote, “It is always worth giving ourselves another chance. Failures make us stronger. And there is a wonderful world beyond the shadows of the past. I am 39 next month.” It’s a year old. And I’m really excited to start again.”
The first Kashmiri to top the civil services exam, Faisal was allotted the home cadre in 2008. A doctor-turned-bureaucrat, Faisal held several positions in the state and his last position in the government was as the managing director of Jammu and Kashmir Power Development. Corporation (JKPDC). He was selected as an Edward Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in June 2018 and was due to rejoin government service a year later.
However, six months before his return, he surprised everyone by announcing his decision to resign from the service on January 9, 2019, and hinted at joining politics. Shah Faesal returns to bureaucracy
At the time of his resignation, he had tweeted, “To protest the unabated killings in Kashmir and the absence of any credible political initiative from the Central Government, I have decided to resign from the IAS. Kashmiri life matters.
In March that year, he formed his own political party, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement (JKPM). On August 5, 2019, following decisions that stripped the erstwhile state of special status and bifurcated it into union territories, Faesal was barred from flying from Delhi to Istanbul and subsequently placed under house arrest Gone. He was finally released in June 2020.
Soon, Faesal announced that he was not only resigning from his party but quit politics altogether. Since then Faesal had been trying to re-enter the services, which was viewed sympathetically by the government.
During this, Faesal deleted all his previous tweets which were critical of the Center and has been praising the schemes launched by the government in Kashmir. He retweet almost all the statements, announcements and speeches of PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. He had earlier tweeted that people should watch Vivek Agnihotri film on Kashmir Files, exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley.
In an interview to The Indian Express on August 10, 2019, Faesal had called the government’s decision on Kashmir “a disastrous turning point in our collective history”. He further gave several interviews where he said that now Kashmiris had no option but to resist. “I see this as a devastating turning point in our collective history, a day when everyone is realizing that this is the death knell for our identity, our history, our right to our land, our right to exist. A new era of outrage has begun from August 5,” he had told The Indian Express.