Anis Ansari 'out of sight' for too long?

LUCKNOW: It is over two months and former agriculture production commissioner Anis Ansari's fate continues to hang in balance as the state government is still to take a decision on his reply to the showcause notice served on him following a fashion show organised by his wife at his official residence on March 20.
Sources in the state government said that this was the first case in the history of the state where an IAS officer in the grade of chief secretary has been kept in the list of compulsory waiting for such a long time.Although no one could come up with an exact duration of compulsory waiting of an officer of Ansari's rank, a senior official pleading anonymity said, "to my knowledge, nobody of this seniority had ever been kept in the compulsory waiting for more than a week."
He said that the All India service rules is silent on this count as nobody had every dreamt that a situation like this would ever arise. "On lot many issues the rules are silent but we function on ethics. Here in this case, the officer is drawing his full salary and still no work is being taken from him and this has simply no justification," said the official.
"If in the eyes of the state government, Ansari has done something drastically wrong, he should be placed under suspension and a charge sheet served on him, else there is no point keeping him in the list of compulsory waiting for an endless period," said another senior officer. He said that it was well over 40 days since Ansari replied to the show cause notice served on him and by now if the government has not placed him under suspension, he should either have been exonerated of the charges or let off with an adverse entry.
A senior official in the chief minister's secretariat said, "hame to lagta hai ki 'out of sight-out of mind' jaisa mamla hai (I feel this is just a case of 'out of sight-out of mind'). It is my gut feeling that soon a decision on his posting will be taken by the chief minister with a minor punishment like an adverse entry for the communal colour given by him in his reply to his removal."
It may be recalled that Ansari in his reply to the showcause notice had stated that certain officers with communal mindset had conspired against him to block his chances of becoming the next chief secretary. Going by the sequence of events which followed including seeking of VRS by PK Mishra and Atul Kumar Gupta replacing Mishra, the former APC, Ansari was not much of a target, commented an official.