Retired IAS officer Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar is at the centre of growing unrest among the faculty members of Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. Complaints of harassment and denial of work have been raised against him by four persons so far.
Complaints pertain to sustained harassment following a sexual harassment allegation, and undermining years of work in order to favour those close to Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar, who is Director General of Administrative Staff College of India.
N Ramesh Kumar was appointed the DG of ASCI in August 2024. He had previously served as the state Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh. His career as a civil servant was not devoid of controversies. In 2020, he sparked a major row by allegedly arbitrarily cancelling local body elections in the state citing the COVID-19 pandemic. The matter went to court after the state government removed him, and he had to later be reinstated.
According to a complaint filed with the National Commission of Women (NCW), a few days after he took office, Ramesh asked to see a woman professor in her room privately, breaking the usual practice of meeting faculty members either as a group or in the presence of their personal assistants or attenders.
During the meeting, he allegedly made sexually coloured remarks to her. “He said that I will have to ‘satisfy’ people to reach higher positions,” she recollected. When she turned him down, he allegedly left in a huff. The woman professor, who has been working in the institute for more than 15 years, said that she has been subjected to repeated harassment ever since.
The woman told TNM that he publicly humiliated her, yelling at her in front of other staff when she submitted a report detailing conflicts with a tour operator during a Europe programme she coordinated on behalf of the institute. “That was the start of the consequences I faced,” she said. She was demoted from her position as the director of a centre in the college. She was also moved from her office room, and given a much smaller office.
In September 2024, the woman professor approached ASCI chairman K Padmanabhaiah, who is also a retired IAS officer and former Union Home secretary. “The chairman asked me to personally sort it out with the DG,” she said. It was then that she decided to further escalate the matter, and raised the issue with the National Commission for Women (NCW).
Determined to get justice, she emailed copies of the complaint to four publicly available email addresses of Prime Minister Narendra Modi too. She has not received any response to the emails till date.
Upon receiving her complaint, the NCW first refused to intervene, stating that it is a civil matter. She then presented them with further evidence pointing to the sexual harassment, after which a case was formally registered.
The NCW took up the complaint with ASCI chairman Padmanabhaiah, who replied with an action taken report (ATR) on November 18, 2024, stating that the issue has been addressed and that the woman professor has not been discriminated against. A day later, she submitted further evidence, alleging the contrary, to the NCW.
The NCW held a virtual hearing on Wednesday, June 3, and closed the case after instructing ASCI administration to share a November 2024 IC report with her. The complainant was told that she may approach the appellate authority if she is not satisfied with the findings of the IC.
The internal investigation into the complaint too has been unsatisfactory, she said. Allegedly, when the incident happened, there was no Internal Committee (IC) in place in the institute as per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act (POSH).
Even after the IC was constituted, issues persisted, the woman professor alleged. “The IC was under the direct control and supervision of DG Ramesh Kumar,” she said.
According to her, its constitution was also in violation of Section 4 (Constitution of Internal Complaints Committee) of the POSH Act.
Citing the issues in the constitution of the IC, the woman professor refused to appear for hearings before the committee thrice. “They are clearly ignoring my reservations about the IC members directly reporting to the accused,” she added.
On November 23, 2024, the IC closed the case citing lack of relevant details, and the complainant’s absence from the IC hearings.
Contract renewal
ASCI is a post-experience management education institute, which offers long-term and short term training programmes, as well as research and consultancy services to working professionals. A senior ASCI professor told TNM that ASCI mostly works with government departments, civil servants, Union ministries, and Public Sector Undertakings (PSU) to train administrators. Faculty members are expected to generate work and revenue through such programmes.
The work norms stipulate that a faculty member should generate revenue amounting to Rs 95 lakh per annum. They are generally appointed on contracts extending between two and five years. Renewal of the contract is dependent on the work and revenue the professors generate.
The woman professor alleged that she has been denied work, despite having consistently brought an average revenue of Rs 1 crore to the institute over the past three years. “Faculty members have to generate work, but the institute also has a responsibility to assign us work, as the principal employer,” she said, alleging that that has not been the case with her ever since she complained against the DG.
Moreover, when her previous contract ended in November 2025, she was given the “shortest extension possible” of six months. The six month period expired on May 31. When she arrived at ASCI on June 1, she found herself locked out, with security personnel instructed not to let her enter the campus.
She pointed out that this is in violation of the POSH Act, as the probe into her complaint is still underway. She said that she will be approaching the court to seek a stay. “I can only try this much. I've gone to the NCW. I can go to the High Court, I can write to the Prime Minister. How much more can I fight?” she asked.
In 2026, three professors sent two complaints to the ASCI court of governors (COG), and have since allegedly faced various forms of harassment.
Sources at ASCI told TNM that the complainants fear their contracts will be affected. The Director General is accused of favouring those in his caucus, and taking over centres and sub centres they have developed through years of effort.
The professors highlighted three issues in their first letter to the COG. First, they alleged that the Centre for Management of Land Acquisition, Resettlement, and Rehabilitation was suddenly merged to another centre and cut down in size, with no notice or information to the faculty-in-charge.
The second issue raised was the attempt to close down the cyber lab and repeated threats by some deans to take away control of the work on cyber security that one of the complainants had developed.
Thirdly, they alleged that the faculty member who initiated specialised work in the Centre for Health Care Management was left in the dark about certain expansion work, thereby undermining their performance and denying them any leadership position.
“The DG is bringing in incompetent bureaucrats instead of domain experts,” the source told TNM.
After the letter was sent to the COG on February 21, the complainants allegedly faced systematic harassment and denial of work. Some of them faced public humiliation at public events and review meetings, with the DG Ramesh Kumar allegedly throwing them out of parties thrown by Centres, using abusive language, and even issuing physical threats.
A clause in the quarter allotment letter regarding rearing of animals and poultry in the compounds was allegedly used to aggravate a complainant keeping kittens at their home. They were allegedly given extreme options like vacating the quarters, or losing their pets and fumigating the house thrice in a week with aluminium phosphide gas.
On June 2, TNM reached out to both Nimmagadda Ramesh and Padmanabhaiah for their responses.
Nimmagadda replied that as the “affected party, I maintain arm’s length distance. All I can say is the allegations are totally motivated and malicious. The Registrar, ASCI, will answer to your complete satisfaction.” He added, “We will answer with reference to the broader issues. Internal administrative matters are governed by privacy concerns at ASCI.” However, TNM is yet to receive a response from the registrar.
Padmanabhaiah offered to talk in detail during a recorded in-person interview, but did not respond to queries regarding his address and appointment time.