Karnataka IAS officer served showcause notice over Tablighi Jamaat tweet, says ‘can’t please everyone’
A day after being served a showcause notice by the Karnataka government for a tweet on the Tablighi Jamaat congregation, IAS officer Mohammed Mohsin on Saturday said he “can’t please everyone all the time”.
Mohsin, posted as a secretary in the Backward Classes Welfare Department in Karnataka, was served a showcause notice by the state government over the social media post about recovered patients of the Tablighi Jamaat congregation donating their plasma for the treatment of other Covid-19 patients in Delhi.
In the now-deleted tweet, Mohsin had praised members of the congregation for coming forward to donate their plasma and asked if the media would show “the works of humanity done by these heroes”.
Taking note of the tweet, the Karnataka government in a notice said, “the adverse coverage this tweet has got in the media has been taken note (of) given the serious nature of the COVID-19 issue”.
A spike in the number of positive Covid-19 cases was traced to a March congregation of the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi. Around 350 members, who had attended its congregation in Nizamuddin Markaz and were subsequently diagnosed with coronavirus, have agreed to donate their plasma to treat severely ill patients in the city.
The state government has given Mohsin, a 1996 batch IAS officer hailing from Patna, five days to respond to the notice, which was issued on April 30, failing which action will be taken against him under the All India Service Rule (1968), the notice added.
Mohsin said he will reply to the notice as per rules. “Yes, I have got the notice and shortly I am giving reply as per the rules,” the IAS officer was quoted as saying by PTI.
Claiming that he had only shared a news item of a private news channel, Mohsin said he has no idea why there is so much outrage over the tweet. “You can’t please everyone all the time,” the officer said in reply to a PTI query whether he saw any conspiracy behind the row.
Mohsin was in the news during the Lok Sabha elections in April last year after the Election Commission suspended him for trying to inspect Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s helicopter during his visit to Odisha in April. He was deployed as a poll observer.
The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) later stayed the EC order to bar the IAS officer from election duties and to initiate disciplinary action against him for trying to search the helicopter and cavalcade of PM Modi. The incident happened when Modi visited Sambalpur to address an election rally.
