Prabhat Kumar appointed Greater Noida, YEIDA chairman

Prabhat Kumar appointed Greater Noida, YEIDA chairman

NOIDA: In the second round of the reshuffle (फेरबदल) of 41 bureaucrats(नौकरशाहों), the Yogi Aditya Nath-led BJP government has given the charge of commissioner of Meerut Range to Dr Prabhat Kumar, who is currently posted as resident (निवासी) commissioner Uttar Pradesh in New Delhi. He takes over from Alok Sinha, who was last week transferred as UP principal secretary (Industries) and Chairman Noida Authority.

Kumar has also been given additional charge as chairperson of the two Authorities of GB Nagar, Greater Noida and YEIDA. This post was being held by senior IAS officer Sanjay Agarwal.

For Kumar, who is a 1985 batch officer, this is the second stint in GB Nagar. He was deputy CEO of Noida Authority from January 1996 to April 1997. During his tenure, he had spotted faults in the corporate group housing scheme which was an open-ended scheme with no ending date. He was a key witness to a Noida land allotment scam that took place between 1993-95 during the tenure of senior IAS officer Neera Yadav and was termed 'very important' in the judgment by a CBI court, which finally sent the IAS officer and former UP chief secretary, Yadav, to jail. Kumar got a special mention in the 73-page judgment passed by CBI special judge A K Singh in Ghaziabad.

A gold medallist in medicine, Kumar took over as director general of civil aviation in January 2014. Prior to that, he was holding the charge of joint secretary in the Union ministry of civil aviation since October 2012. He has done his MBA from Australia and is a law graduate from Delhi University. He also holds a gold medal in postgraduate diploma in environmental law and management from Indian Law Institute, New Delhi.

As joint secretary in the ministry of civil aviation, he was instrumental in liberalising (उदारीकरण) the policy regime in the civil aviation sector and also in facilitating the turnaround of Air India. His appointment is being viewed as a boost to the proposed Jewar airport project.