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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday recalled her interactions and the advice given to her by former bureaucrat B.S.Raghavan, who passed away recently.
Mr. Raghavan belonged to the West Bengal IAS cadre of 1952. He had held senior positions in the governments of West Bengal and Tripura, and retired as West Bengal Chief Secretary.
Sharing some of the interactions she had with him at memorial function ‘Celebrating the life of a formidable intellect: Memorial in honour of Late B.S.Raghavan, IAS’, she said, “When I moved over to Defence Ministry, he did give gave me an advice, which said: it is a Ministry that had lot of challenges, not just the border issues, but maintaining the harmony between the uniformed and the civil arms.”
The Minister also said that his advice was sought by most political parties in Tamil Nadu. “That shows how versatile he was. There was no element of prejudice, no element of subjectivity and no element of playing one against the other,” she said.
Ms. Sitharaman mentioned that she has immensely benefited from the articles written by Raghavan in The Hindu Businessline. She recalled her discussions with him on the importance of technology and how it was necessary to bring in efficiency with technology.
S. Gurumurthy, Editor of The Thuglak, recalled his long years of friendship with Raghavan. Senior Advocate N.L.Rajah shared a presentation that has some rare pictures of Raghavan. Many other senior advocates and former government officials, who were present at the memorial function, shared their views about him. Former Chief Election Commissioners T. S. Krishnamurthy and N. Gopalaswami were present.
