Two days after Madhya Pradesh Dalit IAS officer Ramesh Thete expressed his pain and anguish through a letter alleging injustice for being an Ambedkarite, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that his sympathies have always been with Thete.
Singh took to Twitter and wrote, "My sympathies have always been with Ramesh Thete. I am sad that I could not help him even though I wanted to."
1993 batch IAS officer Ramesh Thete after retiring on July 31, wrote an open letter on last day of his service titled, ‘Lekin yeh sabit hua ki tum nyay hee nahi karna chahte’ ( But it is proved that you don’t want to do justice.) Retirement from the service is like being free from slavery, wrote Thete.
“I have paid for being an Ambedkarite. I was the only IAS from MP cadre who kept Baba Saheb’s photo on my table and worked for the upliftment of downtrodden without any fear,” the retired IAS has written.
An organized gang of casteists hounded me and preyed on me, he wrote.
Targeting the casteist forces, he wrote that ‘they’ did not let him become collector despite being a direct IAS officer. Despite being eligible to be promoted as principal secretary ‘they’ got me entangled in legal cases, claimed Thete.
Construction of a model road in Jabalpur through Janbhagidari brought them anguish. I worked for downtrodden in Betul and Ujjain and they got me trapped in false legal cases, read his letter.
Terming the then Lokayukta ‘casteist’, Thete has written that he tried to implicate him false cases through Lokayukta trap and filed 25 cases against him. "The high court gave a nod to my decisions yet they kept frivolous legal cases going against me, against established norms. When High Court absolved me of all those charges they framed my wife in a case and made me co-accused to stop my promotion to principal secretary’s post," wrote Thete.
Thete concluded the letter by saying that now he is freed from shackles of slavery and has a constitution with him. He wrote," I am an artist and have a pen with me and a lot of stories of the downtrodden. So…role, camera and action."
Thete had also had written a letter to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on July 25 urging him to promote to principal secretary rank before retirement.
