Four senior aides attached to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav have been removed from his office through separate government orders issued on July 3, in a rare administrative reshuffle that has invited sharp reactions from the Opposition.Official sources said the government’s action was aimed at reinforcing transparency and accountability. “It was an internal decision to focus on accountability and transparency within the ministry,” an official said.Among those removed is Amar Singh, a 2010-batch Indian Revenue Service officer who was serving as the Minister’s private secretary. He has been repatriated to his parent cadre, the Department of Revenue, on “administrative grounds”.Another officer, Shailesh Kumar Singh of the Central Secretariat Service (CSS), who was serving as an Additional Private Secretary to the Minister, has been “prematurely repatriated” to his parent cadre, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), under the provision of “extended cooling off”. He has been relieved of his duties with immediate effect and asked to report to the DoPT.Another additional private secretary, Ayush Sharan, has also been relieved with immediate effect. The official order states that his appointment has been terminated. The services of assistant private secretary Siddharth Yadav have also been terminated with immediate effect, according to separate office orders. He was appointed in June 2024.The Ministry has not publicly disclosed the reasons behind the simultaneous removal of the four officers beyond the “administrative grounds” cited in the official orders.In 2023, the tenures of OSDs to Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani were also curtailed.In two separate orders issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the tenure of Goyal’s OSD Anuj Gupta was curtailed with effect from March 7, 2023, while that of Irani’s OSD Shah Devanshi Viren was curtailed with effect from January 31, 2023. Shah later said she had resigned due to “family obligations”. Gupta maintained that he resigned after serving the government for almost a decade.The Congress, meanwhile, questioned the Centre over the sudden removal of key aides of the minister, saying the public had the right to know whether any irregularities had led to the action.“The news of the sacking of four members of the staff of the Union Environment Minister is shocking. It is no secret how such appointments are made in the first place during the Modi regime. Can there be so much smoke without any fire? Could this be an instance of the ‘pradhan mantri chanda do dhandha lo’ scheme having gone awry?” senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said.Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the removal of the minister’s private secretary along with two other officials was not an ordinary administrative exercise and warranted an explanation from the government.“It is not an ordinary matter for the entire staff of a minister to be replaced. What kind of irregularities were taking place? The public has the right to know the truth about any irregularities,” she said.Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey alleged that Madhya Pradesh’s wildlife and environmental policies were influenced by the direct interference of the minister’s staff.