Nalini Netto is a retired officer of the Indian Administrative Service. She served as State Chief Secretary and took office o
1 April 2017
from incumbent S. M. Vijayanand. She is the 42nd head and 4th women head of the state bureaucracy. Before becoming the chief secretary she had been in the post of Chief Electoral Officer and Home secretary. Nalini Netto was in news when she filed a case against the Transport minister

Neelalohithadasan Nadar A. Neelalohithadasan Nadar is a politician from Kerala state of India and has been minister of various departments throughout his career. Career Nadar was a member of Lok Sabha in 1980 7th Lok Sabha, Kerala state's Sports and Youth Minister f ...

in 2000 when she was the Transport Secretary.

Personal life

Nalini Netto was born in 1957 at

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

to Professor T.S. Ramakrishnan and Chandra Ramakrishnan. Nalini's brother Mohan is an Indian Revenue Service officer. Her husband Desmond Netto is a retired IPS officer in Kerala. Her cousin Girija Vaidyanathan was Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu Netto holds a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

and a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

Chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

from the University of Kerala.

Career

In her long career, Nalini Netto has held key posts including the State, starting from 1981, as Tourism Secretary, Irrigation Secretary and District Collector of Thiruvananthapuram. She was then made the Transport Secretary in 1999. Later, Nalini became the first woman to hold the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). Then, she served as the CEO for 11 years. Nalini Netto became the Additional Chief Secretary in 2014. She became Chief Secretary in April 2017. She retired in August 2017. After retirement, she was appointed as Chief Principal Secretary of Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan. She resigned from the post in March 2019 citing personal reasons.

Sexual harassment case

In 1999, Nalini, who was the Transport Secretary then, boldly reacted to alleged sexual harassment by Transport Minister Neelalohitadasan Nadar, leading to the resignation of the latter. Though Nadar was later acquitted in the case, the IAS officer sent out a strong message by pursuing the case against the politician.

T P Sundararajan T.P. Sundararajan (20 April 194117 July 2011) was an Indian lawyer. Sundararajan was a born in the town of Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. He was a prolific student and earned his Indian Police Service, IPS. He went on to ...

, a retired Intelligence bureaucrat turned law professor, was the one who fought the case for her. Before this incident Nadar was penalized for a similar case filed in by the forest officer Prakriti Srivastava.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Netto, Nalini 1957 births Living people 20th-century Indian economists 20th-century Indian lawyers Indian Administrative Service officers