SRINAGAR: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Dr AK Mehta has issued a detailed rebuttal to a report published on April 15, 2025, concerning the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), stating that the allegations of a multi-thousand-crore “scam” were based on unverified claims and did not reflect official records or established procedures.
Kashmir Life had carried the news story based on a detailed report published by The Wire. In his rebuttal, Dr AK Mehta stated the following:
“This rebuttal is issued pursuant to the submission made by Kashmir Life before the Hon’ble Delhi High Court on 3 February 2026, wherein it was stated that the report published on 15 April 2025 was based on a letter authored by Mr Ashok Parmar, defendant No. 1 in Suit CS (OS) No. 859/2025, and that the publication had not independently verified the truth or otherwise of the allegations contained therein, nor had it contacted Dr A. K. Mehta, the plaintiff. The publication further committed to carrying the plaintiff’s version of the plaintiff.
The purpose of this response is limited and precise: to place verifiable facts, institutional records, and procedural realities on record, and to correct impressions created by the earlier report that were not supported by judicial orders, documentary evidence, or the governance architecture of the Jal Jeevan Mission.
On 15 April 2025, Kashmir Life published a report titled Whistleblower IAS Officer Seeks Probe into Former Chief Secretary in Jammu Kashmir’s Rs 6,000-Crore JJM Scam, relying on a letter authored by Mr Ashok Parmar. The report conveyed the impression of an established “scam” and referred to purported court rulings dated 12 April, without even basic verification. This was not a minor lapse. When unverified assertions are presented as judicial facts, journalism’s first obligation—verification—is abandoned.
To place the record straight: no such court ruling existed. A claim of a “court ruling” is not a matter of interpretation; it is a matter of verifiable record. The report identified no court, no case number, no bench, and no operative order, because none existed. Judicial authority was invoked in the narrative to lend credibility to allegations that were, in fact, unverified and demonstrably false. The attribution of judicial findings where none exist is not a harmless error; it is a serious distortion of fact.
The report further stated that “whistleblower” Ashok Kumar Parmar had approached the Anti-Corruption Bureau to book senior authorities for corruption. This sentence alone contained three material mischaracterisations.
First, it conferred the status of “whistleblower” without establishing the disclosure of any new, verifiable facts. The repetition of allegations that had already been examined and repeatedly clarified by the Jal Shakti Department does not amount to whistleblowing.
Second, it withheld a critical fact: that Mr Parmar’s complaints to institutions such as the CVC, CBI, and NCSC were not taken cognisance of by any of these bodies. This indicates that the complaints failed to meet even a basic threshold of institutional scrutiny. Mere reiteration of unsubstantiated allegations does not confer whistleblower status. Truth is the sine qua non for anyone claiming such protection.
Third, the report reproduced allegations without any plausibility check and quoted a sensational figure of Rs 6,000 crore, even though total expenditure under the Mission had not reached even two-thirds of the amount alleged. The implementation status and financial progress of the Mission were readily available in the public domain on the Government of India’s Jal Jeevan Mission dashboard.
When publicly available information is ignored, and sensational allegations are published without even common-sense scrutiny, it departs from basic journalistic standards and results in serious and unwarranted harm to reputations built over decades of public service. Notably, Mr Parmar’s claims over time ranged from Rs. 1,000 to about Rs 14,000 crore, implicating offices with no role in contract management, and were reproduced without scrutiny, balance, or context.
Kashmir Life also did not ascertain why Mr Parmar never made such allegations while he was serving in the Jal Shakti Department, and why he chose to raise them months after his transfer. If any irregularity had existed, Mr Parmar, as the head of the Department at the relevant time, would have borne primary responsibility.
The Supreme Court has consistently held that press freedom is not a licence to dispense with verification or to injure reputation. In Harijai Singh v. Vijay Kumar, the Court affirmed that the press enjoys no special privilege beyond Article 19(1)(a). In R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, it recognised liability where publication is made with reckless disregard for the truth. The constitutional importance of reputation was reaffirmed in Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India. The Court has further emphasised the duty of caution and responsibility before publication (Jaideep Bose v. Bid & Hammer Auctioneers Pvt. Ltd.), and the need to balance press freedom with fair-trial considerations in sub judice matters (Sahara India Real Estate Corp. Ltd. v. SEBI).
The report further alleged that the Chief Secretary had “misled the Prime Minister’s Office”. This allegation is untenable even on the most basic scrutiny of the Mission’s reporting architecture. Progress and expenditure under the Jal Jeevan Mission are reported through the Government of India’s Jal Jeevan Mission Management Information System (JJM MIS/IMIS), a live digital platform in which data is entered, updated, and certified by the implementing department.
Chief Secretaries are neither data-entry authorities nor certifying authorities on the JJM MIS. If Mr Parmar believed any entry was incorrect, the appropriate course—particularly for a senior officer heading the department—was to have it corrected through the departmental chain. No such correction was ever made during his tenure. The attribution of “misleading the PMO” to the Chief Secretary is therefore a manufactured charge, detached from how the system actually functions.
The report further alleged that Dr A. K. Mehta bypassed mandatory administrative approval of the Hon’ble Lieutenant Governor. Such allegations collapse when tested against the governance architecture implemented during Dr Mehta’s tenure in the Finance Department and as Chief Secretary, as well as the Mission’s control framework. No payment could be made without Administrative Approval, Technical Sanction, and e-tendering. Bills were submitted online only, and payments were routed exclusively through PaySys, which does not permit disbursement without mandatory approvals and creates complete audit trails.
Execution required photographic evidence and multiple layers of physical verification within the engineering hierarchy, supplemented by village-level PaniSamitis, district oversight, and public scrutiny through Janbhagidari and EMPOWERMENT portals. Progress and expenditure were reported on the Government of India’s JJM MIS/IMIS, where data entry and certification rest with the implementing department, not with the Chief Secretary. RTI replies from the Jal Shakti Department confirm that these safeguards were not violated, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau found no substance in the allegations.
The record shows that Jammu and Kashmir had instituted one of the most transparent and robust implementation frameworks under the Mission, and it is implausible that Mr Parmar was unfamiliar with it.
The report also refers to Mr Parmar having raised objections. The reality is that he raised no objection while heading the Department, and his allegations began only after his transfer.
The report further asserted that the Mission missed multiple deadlines, ignoring publicly available information that the national Mission deadline was not missed at any point in time. The JJM MIS/IMIS record tells a different story. Mission progress during Mr Parmar’s tenure, as reflected in the MIS data, was the weakest—even lower than during the COVID-affected years. Implementation accelerated thereafter, and nearly 75 per cent of the target of universal tap connections was achieved before Dr A. K. Mehta’s retirement. The Mission’s completion timeline has since been extended to 2028, a policy decision unrelated to the period in question. Subsequent controversy has coincided with a sharp slowdown in implementation, with just about 6% incremental progress subsequently in two years, undermining momentum and harming the Mission’s objectives.
The report also carried allegations that the former Chief Secretary abused public office and colluded with suppliers. These are grave accusations, but they ignore the basic governance architecture of the Jal Jeevan Mission. The Chief Secretary does not manage contracts. Procurement and execution lie with the implementing department and are overseen through multiple functional layers, including the Mission Director, Principal Secretary, and the then Advisor to the Hon’ble Lieutenant Governor at the ministerial level. There were at least three layers separating the Chief Secretary from contractual decisions. No contractual decision, instruction, or deviation attributable to the Chief Secretary was identified—because none exists.
The pattern of distortion is evident elsewhere. Allegations sought to link the Reliance General Insurance matter to Dr Mehta despite his not being posted in Jammu and Kashmir at the relevant time. Similar claims were made regarding Bajaj Allianz, although the Chief Secretary had no role in engaging any insurance provider. A non-existent clause was referred to, creating a smokescreen, just as a non-existent court ruling was cited earlier. Both were found devoid of substance by the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The report stated that “Humesh Manchanda, who was brought in as Chief Engineer of the Jammu division allegedly on Mehta’s behest, is accused of placing pipe orders worth Rs 4,141.5 crore.” Mr Parmar also characterised the posting of MrHumesh Manchanda as conspiratorial, despite records showing that he himself had recommended the posting.
Technical decisions such as the use of HDPE pipes, supported by CPHEEO guidelines, were mischaracterised as wrongdoing. Settled procedures were misstated by asserting that technical sanction precedes administrative approval, contrary to the General Financial Rules, 2017, and by conflating infrastructure works with material procurement.
The report further suggested that Mr Parmar was transferred on the very day he proposed cancellation of HDPE pipe procurement, as if technical decisions are to be taken independently of the advice of the technical team and Government of India guidelines.
The news report further stated the letter highlighted the broader pattern of administrative irregularities, including violations of J&K’s transfer policy and improper appointments that enabled the alleged scam and claims that procurement orders violated guidelines issued by the JJM apex committee, departmental contract committees, and the finance department clarifications. The reality is that it was the Department headed by Parmar who had brought up a number of contractual matters before the Apex Committee and in each case, he was asked to follow the General Financial Rules.
The most revealing distortion appears in Mr Parmar’s own correspondence to the CBI, questioning how Rs 3,592.63 crore (about 25 per cent of approved cost) could yield 74.53 per cent coverage. Nearly 31 per cent of households already had tap connections before the Mission began, making incremental progress approximately 44 per cent, not 75 per cent. Higher physical progress at lower initial expenditure is neither anomalous nor suspicious; it is often desirable.
Finally, Mr Parmar has repeatedly cited the Tawi Barrage project as evidence of irregularity. Yet in his own pleadings before the CAT, Jammu Bench (2025), he acknowledged that the tender was cancelled in April 2022 during his tenure at Rs 59 crore, and that he later obtained Administrative Council approval for the same project at Rs 64.8 crore, despite reduced scope—describing this as an “outstanding achievement”.
What emerges from the record is not evidence of a scam, but a systematic distortion of facts, procedures, and performance metrics, amplified without verification and presented as wrongdoing where none exists. Mr Parmar’s allegations vary from “scam” to “potential scam”and seek to implicate constitutional authorities and others without any evidentiary foundation, with the effect of seriously damaging the reputation of the Government and individual officers.
The digital governance framework implemented during Dr A. K. Mehta’s tenure introduced unprecedented transparency and accountability in Jammu and Kashmir. That the Union Territory ranked first in the National e-Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) 2023, ahead of all States and Union Territories, is a matter of public record. These reforms replaced discretion with traceability and opacity with scrutiny—an outcome demonstrably in the public interest.”
Kashmir Life has informed the court that the publication has lifted the news story but, at the same time, covered a lot of happenings on the implementation of the scheme without any bias or prejudice.
