Bengaluru/ Hassan: Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Rohini Sindhuri Dasari, who was transferred as Hassan Deputy Commissioner by the Siddharamaiah-led government, has been reinstated to her previous position by the High Court.

Rohini Sindhuri took charge as the DC of Hassan at 5 pm yesterday. After her transfer on Jan.22, the government had first appointed D. Randeep as the DC and later he was replaced with P.C. Jaffer on April 25.

The HC yesterday disposed of her petition after Additional Advocate General A.S. Ponnanna submitted in the Court that the Kumaraswamy-led Government passed a notification dated June 25 stating her appointment as the Hassan DC yet again.

She has been posted as the Commissioner of Employment and Training in Bengaluru since April, after the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) had dismissed her petition on the same issue. Rohini had challenged her transfer order at the HC and CAT, citing it as premature and politically motivated. She was posted as Hassan DC in July 2017 and transferred in April 2018. Rohini was transferred after she had a run-in with the local Congress leadership, including with the then District in-Charge Minister A. Manju.

Incidentally, she, as the District Election Officer, had locked down the office of Manju for running his office at the Public Works Department headquarters after the Model Code of Conduct was put into effect.

A few days later, she had alleged that the Minister was bribing voters for granting Bagair Hukum land, based on a report by the Returning Officer just ahead of the elections. Following this, she was the target of a complaint by the Minister, which was later soon found baseless by the Election Commission.

However, the tension between her and the ruling Congress started much earlier.

Rohini’s first run-in with the Congress leadership was in January this year, when she was overseeing preparations for the Mahamastakabhisheka at Shravanabelagola. The party accused her of not toeing the line of the district Congress leadership.

She was soon transferred and someone else was appointed to oversee the preparations. The other reason touted to be the cause of her transfer was her apparent failure to maintain protocol and receive the then CM Siddharamaiah when he visited the district. She had contested her transfer, which was ordered just a little more than six months of her posting, at the HC and later at the CAT then too. The transfer order was withdrawn in March after the Election Commission had stalled it.