Dinesh Arora

Dr. Dinesh Arora hails from Chandigarh, Punjab. Arora completed his MBBS in medicine surgery and acquired first division with distinction.

Arora plays badminton.[3]

He became an IAS officer in 2002 from the Kerala cadre.[4]

Action against illegal mining

Serving as the Ottappalan Sub-Collector, Arora took stern action against illegal sand-mining in the Bharathapuzha at Ottapalam, Pattambi, Thrithala, and Thiruvananthapuram.[5] The illegal mining of sand was carried out indiscriminately using covert means from ‘kadavus' in the capital district in Kerala. No ‘kadavus' have been approved and no passes have been issued by geologists. In spite of various directions and court orders, the law enforcement agencies had failed to control this illegal activity.[6] Quoting Shri Arora, The Hindu newspaper mentioned the local bodies that were auctioning sand had failed to stop illegal sand-mining, which had resulted in the destruction of the river.[7]

Strict rules for students’ road safety in Kerala

His campaign in Kerala to ensure that schools comply with safety regulations is highly praised. He took the charge to inforce various safety measures viz. display ‘On school duty' boards on autorickshaws, cars, mini-vans and other hired while transporting students. He also mandated maximum carriage capacity for Autorickshaws, 10 years of driving experience and an EIB driving permit for the drivers. He made it mandatory for school buses to have a fire extinguisher, first-aid box, well-fortified windows, lockable doors and emergency exits. Arora also ordered Regional Transport Officers (RTOs) to impound student carriers violating safety norms after April 1, 2011 and to prosecute their drivers and registered owners.[8]

Ban on illegal mining operations in the quarries in Thiruvananthapuram

Acting as a District Collector and District Magistrate, Dr. Arora banned all the blasting operations leading to illegal and unscientific cutting in the quarries in Thiruvananthapuram to ensure the health and safety of the people. This was followed by constitution of a committee headed by the Additional District Magistrate along the District Geologist and the District Officer of the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (PCB) as members to carry out a safety audit of mining operations in the 181 quarries in the district.[9]

Ensured free and fair polling at Kannur

Arora made the polling at Kannur district in Kerala free and fair by deploying 150 videographers at sensitive booths, all trained to capture critical events on election day, like sealing of electronic voting machines (EVMs), positioning of voting compartments, polling agents, voters waiting in queue at the close of scheduled hour and the last voter in queue, visits of sector officers, the observers and other electoral functionaries. Kannur, otherwise has been one of the most difficult poll pavements during elections.[10]

Formulation of strict guidelines for parading of elephants

In the midst of growing dissonance between Kerala's captive elephants and the mobile-toting population,[11] Dr. Dinesh Arora (the then District Collector of Thiruvananthapuram) formulated a new set of regulations after a district-level meeting to prevent cruelty to elephants under the Kerala Captive Elephants (Management and Maintenance) Rules 2003.[12] The regulations came into effect from May 1, 2011 and it demanded organisers of celebrations using elephants to seek permission from the District Forest Officer, two weeks in advance. The DFO is now required to submit a copy of the permit to the Collector. This permit is based on a certificate issued by the Forest Veterinary Officer or the veterinary surgeon of the Elephant Squad. The DFO has to inspect the mahout's certificate, movement register and other documents to ensure that the elephant to be paraded is free of musth, diseases, injuries and signs of pregnancy, before issuing a permit.

Health Initiatives

As State Mission Director, Arogyakeralam of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), Govt. of Kerala, Arora under took a Rapid Assessment to explore the overall reach as well as the performance of the Radio Health FM programme in Thiruvananthapuram in disseminating health promotion among the public.[13]

Providing transparency in rural electrification

Dinesh Arora, who heads the efforts of Government of India in rural electrification has played an instrumental role in formulating the 'Garv App' and also setting up of institutional mechanism of Gram Vidyut abhiyanta. The Garv App was formally unveiled by Power Minister Piyush Goyal in March 2016.[14] The mobile app enables GVAs to update photographs of the electrical infrastructure along with GPS coordinates during their visit for monitoring the progress of electrification and map it with pre-defined milestones. As most of the unelectrified villages lack proper network connectivity, so it has been ensured that data can also be captured in ‘offline mode’ and get synced with the server after returning to network area. The mobile app provides a dashboard, which gives an overview of the electrification status of the 18,452 un-electrified villages of the country. It displays the number of milestones achieved, status of the progress state-wise, district-wise and village-wise. One can even track the names of contractors implementing the projects in any un-electrified village, date of award of project at the village level, number of villages visited till date by GVAs, visits undertaken in last seven days, villages electrified in past four weeks etc.[15][16]

Recently, Piyush Goyal during the launch of 'GARV' newsletter for rural electrification felicitated REC executive director Dinesh Arora for achieving one-third of the rural electrification target by electrifying more than 6,000 villages across the country.[17]

In 2013 he received a scholarship from the British Government to attend a course at the London School of Economics and Political Science.[18]

The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants presented Arora with a human resources award.[19][20]

In 2016 Arora won a badminton tournament in Shillong.[3]