Senior Bihar bureaucrat in eye of storm for taking chartered plane with family
Opposition RJD and Congress raise issue in and outside Assembly; Minister defends: ‘He travelled with CM to Delhi, took return journey as plane was going back to Bihar’
Nilesh Ramchandra Deore, a Secretary with both the Tourism and Civil Aviation departments of the Bihar government, was unavailable for comment. (Photo generated with AI) Bihar Tourism Department Special Secretary Nilesh Ramchandra Deore has found himself in the eye of a storm after the Opposition flagged in the Assembly on Monday that he had travelled by a chartered plane with his family from New Delhi to Patna last June.
It was RJD MLA Rahul Sharma who first raised the matter in the Bihar Legislative Assembly on Monday, asking how the IAS officer could afford a chartered plane.
Deore, a Secretary with both the Tourism and Civil Aviation departments of the Bihar government, was unavailable for comment.
Bihar Rural Works Minister Ashok Choudhary, however, explained on Monday: “Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Civil Aviation Secretary Nilesh Deore and I were on an official trip from Patna to Delhi last July. The plane had to return to Patna anyway. Deore and his family boarded the plane on its return journey.” Choudhary also asked if Deore had no right to fly because he is Dalit.
Bihar Congress spokesperson Asit Nath Tiwari hit back: “Rather than the government or the officer in question putting the record straight, Choudhary has been trying to play the Dalit card. We only want the government to tell us if the officer was charged a fare for his travel or if the journey was at the expense of the poor.”
RJD MLA Sharma, who had raised the matter in the Assembly, said outside, “We only want to know how an IAS officer can afford a journey by a chartered plane.”
Deore, a 2011-batch IAS officer from the Bihar cadre, hails from Nasik, Maharashtra. His father, now retired, was an officer in the agriculture department. Deore did MBBS from a private college in Navi Mumbai before clearing the UPSC examinations.
He has served as District Magistrate in Madhubani, Banka, Chapra, and Bettiah. In September 2022, he was appointed as the private secretary to Union Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel, Jyotiraditya Scindia. Subsequently, he returned to Bihar.
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