'Collector Bro' To Suspend 'Whistleblower': The Journey Of A Kerala IAS Officer

'Collector Bro' To Suspend 'Whistleblower': Kerala IAS officer N Prashanth, who goes by the moniker 'Collector Bro', has been suspended on disciplinary grounds after he publicly criticized a senior officer. Yet, over three lakh people follow him on Facebook and more than 50,000 on Instagram. His social media activity earlier raised eyebrows among politicians, but the bureaucrat has insisted that social media is the best platform to reach the people.

Ironically, it was criticism of a senior officer on his social media that resulted in him getting into trouble and ultimately led to government action against him. The 2007-batch IAS officer has described Additional Chief Secretary A Jayathilak as a psychopath and accused him of engineering false news reports against him. After state government action, the officer described himself as a "whistleblower". He also stated that becoming an IAS was not one of his big ambitions and he has had other interests and hobbies.

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N Prashanth is from Thalassery, in the Kannur district of Kerala. He studied at Loyola School and Government Law College in Thiruvanathapuram. He then pursued his graduation degree in law with banking from the Indira Gandhi National Open University. He got into IAS in 2007. He has had several roles and has been serving the district, currently occupying the post of Kozhikode district collector since 2015. He has earned the nickname 'Collector Bro' due to his active exchange with people through social media and initiatives like distributing handbaskets in schools.

One such initiative that really caught attention was a Facebook message in which he requested people to help him clean a 14-acre lake. And as a reward, he promised the volunteers a plate of Malabar biryani. Several volunteers turned up, and later they were rewarded with a biryani treat.

He wrote a book, Collector Bro: The quixotic 'thallals' of a civil servant, describing his experience of leading the Kozhikode district administration. Over the years, he rose to the post of Special Secretary in the SC/ST Development Department.

Mr Prashanth has made serious allegations against Additional Chief Secretary Jayathilak. He has called the senior bureaucrat a "psychopath" and accused him of having messed up the careers of those subordinates who did not comply with his orders. The trigger for this outburst was a media report suggesting that a few files of 'Unnathi' -- an initiative focused towards the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes -- went missing during Mr Prashanth's tenure as CEO of the initiative. The IAS officer termed the allegations rubbish and accused Mr Jayathilak of being a "special reporter" who was allegedly selling his story and bringing down him by planting a fake news.

Following the suspension, the IAS officer told a TV channel, "This is a new experience for me. Criticising the government or its policies is wrong and action can be taken. I don't think anyone will be of the opinion that I have done anything like that. My criticism was aimed at certain individuals' inappropriate tendencies, particularly regarding fabricated reports. Evidence has also come to light regarding this. I trust that creating fake reports is not a government policy, but if criticising such actions leads to consequences, that's news to me."

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Not that N Prashanth's action would have played out without a political backdrop. CPM leader and former Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma had alleged that the IAS officer was part of a political conspiracy against her. The plot, she alleged was hatched by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala and N Prashanth, who was earlier his private secretary.

"Today, Kerala is witnessing the fallout of Shri Prashanth IAS breaking all service rules and common decency. But back in February 2021, Prasanth played the villain in a political conspiracy," she said in a Facebook post.

She drew attention to the allegation by Mr Chennithala that even when she was at the helm, the Fisheries Department had cleared a ₹ 5,000 crore deep-sea trawler deal . "This news stirred up controversy. When reporters asked me, I clarified that no such deal had taken place. Ramesh Chennithala released a document supposedly showing that an MoU had been signed... Chennithala falsely claimed that the Fisheries Department had signed the MoU, but in reality, it was signed by Prasanth," she added.

In the meanwhile, the Congress-led UDF has retorted that government officers in Kerala are fighting each other under the Left regime.

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