India | Updated Feb 21, 2012 at 07:21pm IST
http://ibnlive.in.com/byline/Meetu-Jain.html
New Delhi: The high profile Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is in the news once again and for all the wrong reasons.
An IRS officer working for the project has moved court against a colleague, an IAS officer at the authority's Hyderabad office, over alleged sexual harassment.
She was forced to approach court after the UIDAI didn't act against the officer despite orders from the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).
IRS officer S Padmaja, first approached the CAT seeking transfer of the officer who was harassing her sexually. The CAT not only ordered the transfer of the officer but also found it strange that the UIDAI did not take action against the guilty officer.
The tribunal had forced a reluctant UIDAI to place on record the report of an in-house committee, which found the officer guilty.
The court also questioned why the copy of the report that held her boss guilty was not given to the victim.
The IAS officer VS Bhaskar challenged the CAT order in the Andhra High Court on Friday. But now in an apparent backtracking, the UIDAI has informed the court that the officer is being repatriated to his parent cadre.
"The final hearing of the case is on Wednesday," said J Sudheer, counsel for the victim.
The UIDAI headed by IT czar Nandan Nilekani was supposed to be a corner stone for good governance, bringing best practices of the corporate world into government functioning. But the latest controversy of a sexual harassment case at the UIDAI and the courts taking a dim view of the manner in which it was handled, hasn't helped the authority, which was in the news recently over issues of data security and authenticity of the data it has been generating.