By IANS
Lucknow : Former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Neera Yadav, who was removed from the top post by the Supreme Court on charges of corruption, Saturday decided to opt for voluntary premature retirement.
An officer of the 1971 batch of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Yadav was due to superannuate in June 2008.
Yadav has been a controversial figure and has faced numerous charges of corruption. Voted by the state IAS association as being part of “three most corrupt IAS officers”, she was charge-sheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a multi-million-land scam during her stint as chairperson of NOIDA.
Some of her own colleagues suspect that she chose to quit to dilute the criminal trial pending before a special CBI court in Ghaziabad.
She was the second chief secretary of the state to be removed by the apex court on charges of graft. Earlier Akhand Pratap Singh, now facing charges of amassing wealth disproportionate to known sources of income, was removed on the court’s order.
A senior IAS officer, who spearheaded the association’s campaign to carry out a secret ballot to identify the most corrupt IAS officers in the state, said: “Yadav’s decision would serve as an example to other tainted officers who were responsible for tarnishing the image of the prestigious service.”