NEW DELHI: The former civil servant from Kerala’s Kottayam district says the decision to join politics came after six years of introspection and deliberation. Kannan Gopinathan, who left the civil service six years ago, disillusioned with the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and the subsequent crackdown on civil liberties, has now entered politics.
“I left the IAS job six years ago because I felt I could not raise my voice against the curtailment of citizens’ fundamental rights while in service,” Gopinathan said at a press conference a few hours after joining the Congress. “This government was intimidating people on fundamental rights like citizenship, and I left the service at the call of my conscience.” He said, “It is absolutely clear to me that there cannot be two types of citizenship, citizens cannot have citizenship without freedom, and the burden of citizenship cannot be imposed on people.” He said this in reference to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed by Parliament in December 2019 under the Modi government.
After resigning from the IAS, Gopinathan has had a difficult path, facing trolling and harassment.“My life was very traditional—I studied engineering, worked, then took the UPSC exam and was selected, joined the IAS, got married, etc. So, I didn’t plan for what came after that,” he said. “In the initial months after resigning, I spent time building a movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) because the journey of Indians from being subjects to citizens is very important to me.”
He said, “This government has started scaring people on a fundamental issue like citizenship, and this is unacceptable in any democracy.”
“In a democracy, citizens and voters elect the government, not the government elects the citizens,” he said. “And what is the government after all? At the grassroots level, it’s a patwari or tehsildar who decides whether a person is an Indian or not. This cannot work in a democracy.”
As he realized that the Congress Party stood for the protection of these rights, especially under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he decided to join the party.   
“Joining the Congress is the result of six years of introspection and reflection,” said Gopinathan, a resident of Kerala. “The first question was whether, by joining organized politics, I would lose the voice I had left the IAS for. Second, I had to look at the ideals and ideology of the Congress party, which the party has fought for for decades, and not focus solely on external image—such as whether I like a leader or not, or whether I agree with the party’s stance on a particular issue.” He said, “Today, the result of that introspection and reflection has come to light.”
Gopinathan, a 2012-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territories) cadre, came to prominence for his role in relief work during the devastating floods in Kerala in 2018. For eight days,  Gopinathan worked at relief camps in flood-ravaged Kerala. On the ninth day, the district collector of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, a federally ruled territory in western India, was recognized and he quietly left, as discreetly as he had arrived and helped. He spent two days carrying large packages on his head while offloading relief material from trucks in the port city of Kochi. Gopinathan had arrived in Kerala on August 26 as the state battled devastation from deadly floods. He was on an official visit to hand over a check for 10 million rupees from Dadra and Nagar Haveli for the Kerala chief minister’s relief fund. Once that engagement was over, the 32-year-old official took a bus from the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram. Not to his home town Puthupally, but to one of Kerala’s worst-affected areas, Chengannur. He went from camp to camp helping distressed people forced to abandon their homes and seek shelter.
A year later, he surprised everyone by announcing his resignation when the central government revoked Article 370 and downgraded Jammu and Kashmir’s status to a union territory.Six years later, the government has not accepted his resignation. He said, “The resignations of many officers who resigned after me have been accepted, but mine hasn’t been accepted yet.” This prevented him from taking up a job in the private sector. “I couldn’t join any company because I wasn’t formally relieved from service. So I could only work here and there as a consultant,” he said. “This caused me and my family financial difficulties.”
Two months after Gopinathan’s resignation, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) proposed a departmental inquiry against him on charges of “misconduct” and “conduct unbecoming.” The allegations stated that he violated conduct rules that prohibit an officer from “communicating to the media without permission on government policies” and “criticizing government policies” that “could harm the relations of the Central Government with other organizations or foreign states.”
When the COVID pandemic broke out, the government asked him to rejoin the IAS because his resignation had not been accepted, otherwise he could have faced a one-year sentence or a fine. He said, “The easiest way to silence a dissenting voice is to defame it, and that’s what happened to me. They fabricated false stories about me. It’s been six years, and my resignation hasn’t been accepted.” He said that while it’s unknown whether the government deliberately intended to harass him, the consequences of their actions were disturbing.
Speaking on the state of the bureaucracy, Kannan said that officers are used as tools to intimidate people. “This government has created two paths for civil service officers—protect themselves or do the right thing. People often choose the first path,” he said.

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