Journalist-turned-bureaucrat takes over as Panchkula DC

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 18

A journalist-turned-bureaucrat, Gauri Parasher Joshi, has taken over as the new Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Panchkula. The 35-year-old IAS officer has assured best public delivery services and a public-friendly administration. She is the 18th DC of Panchkula and eighth woman officer to head the district which came into being on August 15, 1995.

“Administration is a continuous process. My predecessors were also giving their best and I also plan to do the best,” the 2009-batch Odisha-cadre bureaucrat told The Tribune today.

The wife of Chandigarh DC, Ajit Balaji Joshi, the new Panchkula DC said she would first understand the system and ongoing works from the team of officers in the district administration before taking them forward. “I don’t want to restrict myself to fixed ideas. Every day is a new day, which comes with new ideas,” said the young DC when asked about her priorities.

Having won accolades for initiating and implementing various government programmes and policies at the grassroots level to bring positive changes in Kalahandi district of Odisha, which is known for acute poverty and wide illiteracy, during her first posting as SDM in Dharamgarh in 2011 and then Project Director of District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) in 2013, Gauri had moved on deputation to Haryana in 2014.

“Two years’ tenure in Kalahandi, a district that offers a plethora of wild treks over hillocks, across rivulets, even rivers, enticed one to reach the people one is meant to work for. For the last two years, work and a desire to live near the family have brought me to Haryana. An opportunity to learn of ways to be able to contribute in a geographical-social milieu so varied from that of Odisha’s,” she shared.