Aditya Nath Jha


Aditya Nath Jha of the Indian Civil Service was the recipient of Padma Vibhushan in 1972 for his service to Civil Services in India. He belonged to the 1936 batch of the ICS.
Jha was the son of Sir Ganganath Jha, and the brother of Shri Amarnath Jha, a scholar of English and Sanskrit and former vice-chancellor of Allahabad University. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, he entered the ICS on 16 September 1936 and served in the United Provinces as an assistant magistrate and collector before transferring to the Indian Political Service in November 1939. At the time of Independence, he was the secretary to the Resident for the Eastern princely states.
Post-independence, Jha served as the first director of the National Academy of Administration, Mussorie.

Early life and education

Jha was the son of Sir Ganganath Jha and brother of Dr. Amarnath Jha who had been the Vice Chancellor of the Allahabad University, and then the Chairman of the Bihar Civil Service Commission.
He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. He served as former Vice Chancellor at Sanskrit University, Benares. He wrote a book titled ‘'Bharatiya Darshano ka Samnavay'’. He was an avid tennis player both at India as well as at Oxford University, where he was an ICS probationer. He joined as an Indian Civil Service officer in 1936.
He served as Assistant Magistrate and Collector before transferring to the Indian Political Service in 1939. At the time of Independence, he was serving as secretary to the Resident for the Eastern Princely States.
Post-Independence, he served as the first Director of National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie from 1959- 1962. He was also appointed as Additional Secretary to Government of India, in the Planning Commission in 1962. He then, served as secretary of the ministry of information and broadcasting in the mid-1960s. Later he was the first Lt. Governor of Delhi who served between 1966- 1972. He was the recipient of Padma Vibhushan in 1972 for his service to Civil Services.

Tenure as Director, National Academy of Administration

He was selected as the Director of Academy by former Home Secretary of India, Shri B. N Jha. He contributed a lot of books on philosophy and literature to the library at academy.
Grooming to be 'Gentleman-civil servant' along the lines of an ICS officer was very much part of the process of training an IAS officer and there was even a manual for proper conduct. This training period is an impressionable part of the life of an IAS officer and some of the Directors became legend with their students like the ICS officer, Aditya Nath Jha who was a Director in the early 1960s.
A N Jha was remembered by many to have a very charismatic and witty personality.
In the book Bureaucracy – Growth and Development, 1997, U.C Mandal writes, autobiography titled There is no doubt that the Director in the early 1960’s, A.N Jha was very popular with probationers and also very broadminded and relaxed about discipline at the Academy. 'Jha was wonderful; he would stroll out on to the lawn, have four or five chairs brought, sit down and call passing probationers over to sit and chat about a wide variety of subjects in an informal way; he 'had fine sense of humour and was very cultured'’. When two probationers got drunk and fought in Kulri market with bottles and chairs and tables causing Rs 12,000 damages, a shopkeeper called on Jha demanding reparation; to his surprise, Jha said 'there was no question of any action taken against boys as they were like children to him; as for money, Jha claimed that only dogs and probationers were in Mussoorie at that time of the year, so whatever profit the shopkeepers were making was only from his probationers- hence there was 'no question of payment'.

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