Nripendra Misra among 10 Padma Bhushan recipents

New Delhi, Jan 25 : Retired IAS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre, Nripendra Misra, who served as principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from 2014 to 2019, is among the 10 Padma Bhushan awardees for 2021.
When Misra, a 1967 batch IAS officer, stepped down on August 30, 2019 as principal secretary to the Prime Minister, it had created a flutter in the bureaucratic circles.
Bidding farewell to Misra, Modi had recalled that when he became the Prime Minister for the first time, he was totally ignorant of Delhi’s politics. “It was Misra’s wisdom that saw me through many crises,” the PM had said then.
In his five years in Modi government’s first term, the officer had become one of the most powerful retired civil servants in the government. He was someone who had the Prime Minister’s ears, and the power to question and pull up senior civil servants, including secretary-rank officers, if their ministries’ performance was not up to the mark.
Misra was a top aide of two Uttar Pradesh Chief Ministers — Mulayam Singh Yadav when he became the Chief Minister in 1989, and Kalyan Singh who succeeded Yadav as the Chief Minister in 1991.
It was during Misra’s tenure as secretary to Yadav that senior BJP leader L.K. Advani undertook the rath yatra demanding the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.