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Raju Narayana Swamy

2023-09-16T11:42:33Z

103.163.112.118:

{{Short description|Indian civil servant}}

{{Infobox person
| name = Raju Narayana Swamy
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1968|05|24|df=y}} 
| birth_place = {{nobr|[[Changanacherry]]}}, [[Kottayam district|Kottayam]], [[Kerala]], India
| death_date = 
| death_place =
| nationality = [[India]]n
| alma_mater = {{ubl|[[Indian Institute of Technology Madras|IIT Madras]]|
[[St. Berchmans College|St. Berchmans College, Changanassery]]}}
| employer = [[Government of India]]
| organization = [[Indian Administrative Service]]
| known_for = Actions as District Collector against illegal encroachments in [[Idukki district]] of Kerala leading to the resignation of a Minister
}}

'''Raju Narayana Swamy''' (born 24 May 1968) is a 1991-batch [[Indian Administrative Service]] officer belonging to the Kerala cadre, who is presently posted as the Principal Secretary to the State Government. He is the all India first rank holder of the 1991 batch of the IAS and was the [[District Magistrate|District Magistrate and Collector]] of five districts in [[Kerala]]. He also served as Agriculture Production Commissioner, Director of Collegiate Education and as Principal Secretary (Agriculture) to the [[Government of Kerala]]. In March 2019, the Government of India prematurely repatriated Swamy from the post of Chairman of the [[Coconut Development Board|Coconut Development Board (CDB)]], because he had detected multiple instances of corruption.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://m.telegraphindia.com/india/anti-graft-kerala-ias-officer-raju-narayanaswamy-in-govt-axe-cry/cid/1692928|title=Anti-graft Kerala IAS officer Raju Narayanaswamy in govt axe cry}}</ref> He is widely known as an anti-corruption crusader and as the "[[Ashok Khemka]]" of Kerala. He has been transferred over 30 times in the past 32 years.<ref name=":0" /> He is a prolific writer and won the [[Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award]] for Travelogue for Santhimantram Muzhangunna Thazvarayil. He has also won the prestigious [[Homi J. Bhabha|Homi Bhabha]] fellowship (in [[cyber law]]). He was awarded the 2018 [[Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award]] by [[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]] for his professional integrity in upholding human values.

==Early life and education ==
Raju Narayana Swamy attained his [[School|school education]] at [[Sacred Heart High School, Changanacherry]] and [[Pre-university course|pre-degree]] at [[St. Berchmans College]], [[Changanacherry]]. He obtained his computer science graduation from the [[Indian Institute of Technology Madras]]. He stood first rank in the state of Kerala in Class 10 examination [[Secondary School Leaving Certificate|SSLC]] (1983), pre-degree examination (MGU-1985) and [[Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering|Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)]] (1990 – in terms of percentile) conducted for admission to postgraduate engineering courses in India. In 1991, he obtained the first rank in [[Civil Services Examination (India)|Civil Services Examination]] and entered the [[Indian Administrative Service]].

In August 2011, he was awarded a doctorate degree by [[Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham]]. He also holds a second PhD from the [[Gujarat National Law University]]. He is the first bureaucrat to complete all ten courses conducted by the [[National Institute of Disaster Management]], New Delhi in association with the [[World Bank Institute]] in first rank. He has completed 16 post-graduation courses - all with first rank- including LLM from the National Law University, Delhi.

He has undergone training at prestigious institutions both in India ([[Indian Institutes of Management|IIMs]] etc.) and abroad (ENA; [[Paris]], [[France]]; [[Canada]]; etc.). Narayana Swamy al holds a [[diploma]] in [[cyber law]] (from [[Government Law College, Mumbai]]) as well as a PG in cyber law, a PG diploma in environmental law and two PG diplomas each from the [[National Law University, Delhi]] and the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has also published more than 250 research papers in national and international journals of repute in areas as diverse as e-governance to intellectual property rights and is a recognized PhD guide of many universities.

His father, who was a professor of mathematics, played a key role in shaping him up. His mother was a college professor.

== Career ==
A Kerala-cadre officer of the 1991 batch<ref name=":0" /> he has held several posts including [[District Collector]] of five districts, [[Fisheries in India|Director of Fisheries]] and of Collegiate Education, Managing Director, Kerala State Co-operative Marketing Federation (MarketFed) and Commissioner in [[Civil Supplies Department of Kerala]] before being removed allegedly for trying to expose corruption. His anti-corruption campaign started from the very first day of his service, which earned him flaks from political bosses and led to 30 transfers in the last 32 years. He had to pay a huge price for his war against corruption. He was made to go on forced leave as managing director of MarketFed after refusing to play ball with the chairman, a senior politician. He was shunted to sinecure assignments, even posted to work under junior officers.<ref name=":0" />

As District Collector of [[Thrissur]], he single-handedly widened the Pattalom Road and the Inner Ring Road.

He once refused permission to a real-estate businessman to fill up a large paddy farm – it would have deluged some 50 poor village homes nearby with waste from the adjacent government hospital.

In his district, it was a practice to collect crores of rupees for earthen ''bunds'' meant for poor farmers, but which were never constructed. A bill for ₹80 million came up before Narayana Swamy. He inspected the ''bund''. He found it very weak and said that he will pass the bill after the rainy season to ensure that the ''bund'' served the purpose. As expected, the earthen ''bund'' was too weak to stand the rain and it disappeared in the rain. But he created a lot of enemies for saving ₹80 million public money.

After the [[V. S. Achuthanandan]]-led [[Left Democratic Front (Kerala)|LDF]] government came into power in Kerala, Narayana Swamy was appointed as the collector of [[Idukki district|Idukki]] district. When Kerala [[Chief minister (India)|Chief Minister]] {{nobr|V. S. Achuthanandan}} wanted encroachers in [[Munnar]] driven out, Narayana Swamy was one of his three handpicked men. Even senior [[Communist Party of India (Marxist)|CPM]] leaders objected to his choice, but Achuthanandan stood his ground.

In 2007, Narayana Swamy inquired into an alleged illegal land deal by the son and daughter of the then [[Kerala Public Works Department|Kerala Public Works]] minister [[T. U. Kuruvilla]], who was forced to resign following an investigation.<ref name=":0" /> Kuruvilla's children had taken ₹65 million from an [[Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin|NRI]] businessman promising to sell him some prime land, soon suspected to be encroached. The sale did not happen and the businessman went public while Kuruvilla maintained everything was above board. Narayana Swamy, the then Idukki District Collector, probed the land the Minister's children were to sell and reported that a good part of the land they surveyed was government land, some suspectedly benami. Kuruvilla could only agree to quit. It was the first time in the history of the country that a minister had to resign on the report of an IAS officer.

He also proceeded against a former minister [[P. J. Joseph]] and his relatives regarding their alleged illegal landholdings.

"In my service life I have always fought corruption. We could be sidelined but officers should not get demoralized. The public applause we get for taking strong stand on issues is what keeps us going", he said. Since 2007, he has been shunted to various insignificant posts and has thereafter been consistently been picked up by the [[Election Commission of India]] for 36 election duties in 16 states across the country- the latest being at Boxanagar (Tripura) in September 2023. During the [[2012 Uttar Pradesh Elections]], he was roll observer for all six districts in [[Kanpur division]].

Narayana Swamy was appointed as the chairman of the CDB in August 2018, where he unearthed alleged corruption involving the CDB's Bangalore regional director and technical officer. Both were suspended on the basis of Narayana Swamy's findings. Eventually, he was transferred out on 7 March, after which he went to the [[Central Administrative Tribunal]], where his case is pending.

== Literary career and awards ==
Narayana Swamy has 31 books to his credit, the latest being one on popular science – ''Nano Muthal Nakshatram Vare''. He won the [[Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Travelogue]] for ''Santhimantram Muzhangunna Thazvarayil''. He has also won the Bhima Gold Medal and Kunhunni Award (both for children's literature). His other works include ''Niram Mangiya Vazhithara'', which is a translation of ''The Road of Lost Innocence'', the English version of the French [[memoir]]s by [[Somaly Mam]]. At present, he handles two columns for children - one in ''Balarama'' (popular science) and the other in ''Digest'' (Indian Constitution for Children).

In August 2011, he was awarded a doctorate degree by [[Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham]]. He has also won the prestigious [[Homi J. Bhabha|Homi Bhabha]] Fellowship (in [[cyber law]]).

He was one of the recipients of the fourth IRDS Award for public service, awarded by the Lucknow-based [[Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences]] (IRDS). He has been awarded the 2018 [[Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award]] by [[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.iitk.ac.in/dora/sda|title=SDA|website=www.iitk.ac.in|access-date=2019-07-05}}</ref> for his professional integrity in upholding human values. In December 2021 Raju Narayana Swamy was selected for the prestigious 'Leonardo Davinci Fellowship' by [[George Mason University]], [[Virginia]], [[United States|USA]]. This fellowship is being awarded to do research in the field of the Intellectual Property Rights Act using [[Artificial intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] and [[blockchain]] technologies.

== See also ==
* [[Ashok Khemka]]
* [[Satyendra Dubey|Sateyendra Dubey]]
* [[Shanmugam Manjunath]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120110102603/http://persmin.nic.in/ersheet/MultipleERS.asp?HiddenStr=01KL019100 Executive Record Sheet of Raju Narayana Swamy]


{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swamy, Raju Narayana}}
[[Category:Malayali people]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People from Thiruvananthapuram district]]
[[Category:Indian civil servants]]
[[Category:1968 births]]
[[Category:IIT Madras alumni]]
[[Category:Vazhappally]]
[[Category:Indian Administrative Service officers from Kerala]]
[[Category:Civil Servants from Kerala]]
[[Category:District magistrate]]

Raju Narayana Swamy

2023-09-16T11:36:02Z

103.163.112.118:

{{Short description|Indian civil servant}}

{{Infobox person
| name = Raju Narayana Swamy
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1968|05|24|df=y}} 
| birth_place = {{nobr|[[Changanacherry]]}}, [[Kottayam district|Kottayam]], [[Kerala]], India
| death_date = 
| death_place =
| nationality = [[India]]n
| alma_mater = {{ubl|[[Indian Institute of Technology Madras|IIT Madras]]|
[[St. Berchmans College|St. Berchmans College, Changanassery]]}}
| employer = [[Government of India]]
| organization = [[Indian Administrative Service]]
| known_for = Actions as District Collector against illegal encroachments in [[Idukki district]] of Kerala leading to the resignation of a Minister
}}

'''Raju Narayana Swamy''' (born 24 May 1968) is a 1991-batch [[Indian Administrative Service]] officer belonging to the Kerala cadre, who is presently posted as the Principal Secretary to the State Government. He was the [[District Magistrate|District Magistrate and Collector]] of five districts in [[Kerala]]. He also served as an Agriculture Production Commissioner, and as a Principal for Secretary Agriculture to the [[Government of Kerala]]. In March 2019, the Government of India prematurely repatriated Swamy from the post of Chairman of the [[Coconut Development Board|Coconut Development Board (CDB)]], because he had detected multiple instances of corruption.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://m.telegraphindia.com/india/anti-graft-kerala-ias-officer-raju-narayanaswamy-in-govt-axe-cry/cid/1692928|title=Anti-graft Kerala IAS officer Raju Narayanaswamy in govt axe cry}}</ref> He is widely known as an anti-corruption crusader and as the "[[Ashok Khemka]]" of Kerala. He has been transferred over 20 times in the past 22 years.<ref name=":0" /> He is a prolific writer and won the [[Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award]] for Travelogue for Santhimantram Muzhangunna Thazvarayil. He has also won the prestigious [[Homi J. Bhabha|Homi Bhabha]] fellowship (in [[cyber law]]). He was awarded the 2018 [[Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award]] by [[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]] for his professional integrity in upholding human values.

==Early life and education ==
Raju Narayana Swamy attained his [[School|school education]] at [[Sacred Heart High School, Changanacherry]] and [[Pre-university course|pre-degree]] at [[St. Berchmans College]], [[Changanacherry]]. He obtained his computer science graduation from the [[Indian Institute of Technology Madras]]. He stood first rank in the state of Kerala in Class 10 examination [[Secondary School Leaving Certificate|SSLC]] (1983), pre-degree examination (MGU-1985) and [[Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering|Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)]] (1990 – in terms of percentile) conducted for admission to postgraduate engineering courses in India. He attained 10th rank in [[Joint Entrance Examination – Main|IIT Joint Entrance Examination]] for admissions into the [[Indian Institutes of Technology]]. In 1991, he obtained the first rank in [[Civil Services Examination (India)|Civil Services Examination]] and entered the [[Indian Administrative Service]].

In August 2011, he was awarded a doctorate degree by [[Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham]]. He is currently in the process of securing his second PhD from the [[Gujarat National Law University]]. He is the first bureaucrat to complete all ten courses conducted by the [[National Institute of Disaster Management]], New Delhi in association with the [[World Bank Institute]] in first rank. He has completed almost 16 post-graduation courses in first rank.

He has undergone training at prestigious institutions both in India ([[Indian Institutes of Management|IIMs]] etc.) and abroad (ENA; [[Paris]], [[France]]; [[Canada]]; etc.). Narayana Swamy al holds a [[diploma]] in [[cyber law]] (from [[Government Law College, Mumbai]]) as well as a PG in cyber law, a PG diploma in environmental law and two PG diplomas each from the [[National Law University, Delhi]] and the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has also published more than 150 research papers in national and international journals of repute in areas as diverse as e-governance to intellectual property rights and is a recognized PhD guide of many universities.

His father, who was a professor of mathematics, played a key role in shaping him up. His mother was a college professor.

== Career ==
A Kerala-cadre officer of the 1991 batch<ref name=":0" /> he has held several posts including [[District Collector]] of five districts, [[Fisheries in India|Director of Fisheries]] and of Collegiate Education, Managing Director, Kerala State Co-operative Marketing Federation (MarketFed) and Commissioner in [[Civil Supplies Department of Kerala]] before being removed allegedly for trying to expose corruption. His anti-corruption campaign started from the very first day of his service, which earned him flaks from political bosses and led to 20 transfers in the last 22 years. He had to pay a huge price for his war against corruption. He was made to go on forced leave as managing director of MarketFed after refusing to play ball with the chairman, a senior politician. He was shunted to sinecure assignments, even posted to work under junior officers.<ref name=":0" />

As District Collector of [[Thrissur]], he single-handedly widened the Pattalom Road and the Inner Ring Road.

He once refused permission to a real-estate businessman to fill up a large paddy farm – it would have deluged some 50 poor village homes nearby with waste from the adjacent government hospital.

In his district, it was a practice to collect crores of rupees for earthen ''bunds'' meant for poor farmers, but which were never constructed. A bill for ₹80 million came up before Narayana Swamy. He inspected the ''bund''. He found it very weak and said that he will pass the bill after the rainy season to ensure that the ''bund'' served the purpose. As expected, the earthen ''bund'' was too weak to stand the rain and it disappeared in the rain. But he created a lot of enemies for saving ₹80 million public money.

After the [[V. S. Achuthanandan]]-led [[Left Democratic Front (Kerala)|LDF]] government came into power in Kerala, Narayana Swamy was appointed as the collector of [[Idukki district|Idukki]] district. When Kerala [[Chief minister (India)|Chief Minister]] {{nobr|V. S. Achuthanandan}} wanted encroachers in [[Munnar]] driven out, Narayana Swamy was one of his three handpicked men. Even senior [[Communist Party of India (Marxist)|CPM]] leaders objected to his choice, but Achuthanandan stood his ground.

In 2007, Narayana Swamy inquired into an alleged illegal land deal by the son and daughter of the then [[Kerala Public Works Department|Kerala Public Works]] minister [[T. U. Kuruvilla]], who was forced to resign following an investigation.<ref name=":0" /> Kuruvilla's children had taken ₹65 million from an [[Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin|NRI]] businessman promising to sell him some prime land, soon suspected to be encroached. The sale did not happen and the businessman went public while Kuruvilla maintained everything was above board. Narayana Swamy, the then Idukki District Collector, probed the land the Minister's children were to sell and reported that a good part of the land they surveyed was government land, some suspectedly benami. Kuruvilla could only agree to quit. It was the first time in the history of the country that a minister had to resign on the report of an IAS officer.

He also proceeded against a former minister [[P. J. Joseph]] and his relatives regarding their alleged illegal landholdings.

"In my service life I have always fought corruption. We could be sidelined but officers should not get demoralized. The public applause we get for taking strong stand on issues is what keeps us going", he said. Since 2007, he has been shunted to various insignificant posts and has thereafter been consistently been picked up by the [[Election Commission of India]] for 31 election duties in 16 states across the country. During the [[2012 Uttar Pradesh Elections]], he was roll observer for all six districts in [[Kanpur division]].

Narayana Swamy was appointed as the chairman of the CDB in August 2018, where he unearthed alleged corruption involving the CDB's Bangalore regional director and technical officer. Both were suspended on the basis of Narayana Swamy's findings. Eventually, he was transferred out on 7 March, after which he went to the [[Central Administrative Tribunal]], where his case is pending. In June 2019, it was reported that a high-level committee of state and central officials had taken the decision to terminate Narayana Swamy. "There are people who are afraid of me", said Narayana Swamy. Responding to the reports, he said he suspected some "serious moves" against him at the meeting. "They know I will unearth corruption and put many behind bars", Narayana Swamy added.<ref name=":0" /> In fact, the public outcry that followed the Kerala government’s decision to take punitive action against the whistleblower bureaucrat Raju Narayana Swamy put the state’s unflappable chief minister on the back foot and the government had to backtrack.

== Literary career and awards ==
Narayana Swamy has twenty-six books to his credit, the latest being one on popular science – ''Nano Muthal Nakshatram Vare''. He won the [[Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Travelogue]] for ''Santhimantram Muzhangunna Thazvarayil''. He has also won the Bhima Gold Medal and Kunhunni Award (both for children's literature). His other works include ''Niram Mangiya Vazhithara'', which is a translation of ''The Road of Lost Innocence'', the English version of the French [[memoir]]s by [[Somaly Mam]]. At present, he handles two columns for children - one in ''Balarama'' (popular science) and the other in ''Digest'' (Indian Constitution for Children).

In August 2011, he was awarded a doctorate degree by [[Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham]]. He has also won the prestigious [[Homi J. Bhabha|Homi Bhabha]] Fellowship (in [[cyber law]]).

He was one of the recipients of the fourth IRDS Award for public service, awarded by the Lucknow-based [[Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences]] (IRDS). He has been awarded the 2018 [[Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award]] by [[Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur|IIT Kanpur]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.iitk.ac.in/dora/sda|title=SDA|website=www.iitk.ac.in|access-date=2019-07-05}}</ref> for his professional integrity in upholding human values. In December 2021 Raju Narayana Swamy was selected for the prestigious 'Leonardo Davinci Fellowship' by [[George Mason University]], [[Virginia]], [[United States|USA]]. This fellowship is being awarded to do research in the field of the Intellectual Property Rights Act using [[Artificial intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] and [[blockchain]] technologies.

== See also ==
* [[Ashok Khemka]]
* [[Satyendra Dubey|Sateyendra Dubey]]
* [[Shanmugam Manjunath]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120110102603/http://persmin.nic.in/ersheet/MultipleERS.asp?HiddenStr=01KL019100 Executive Record Sheet of Raju Narayana Swamy]


{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swamy, Raju Narayana}}
[[Category:Malayali people]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People from Thiruvananthapuram district]]
[[Category:Indian civil servants]]
[[Category:1968 births]]
[[Category:IIT Madras alumni]]
[[Category:Vazhappally]]
[[Category:Indian Administrative Service officers from Kerala]]
[[Category:Civil Servants from Kerala]]
[[Category:District magistrate]]