Amit Gupta in Limca Book of Records: How this UP IAS turns frequent transfers into a lifelong asset

FOR civil servants, one of the easy punishments being crafted by political leadership, is frequent transfers. We have all heard about many victims, most notable being Ashok Khemka of Haryana cadre, just to mention one. But meet this 2000 batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS -- Amit Gupta who turned this liability of frequent transfers into a lifetime asset. Limca Book of Records, the annual reference book that documents human and natural world records, has issued a certificate to Gupta for his record of…
serving as district magistrate in 14 districts, the most by an Indian civil servant.
Here is the text of the certificate of national records category, as issued by Limca Book of Records: “Amit Gupta, an IAS officer of UP cadre (2000 batch) has served as the District Magistrate (DM) in 14 districts of the State (excluding repetitions), the most by an Indian civil servant. The districts he served between March 8, 2005 and Feb 10, 2014 included Hamirpur, Lalitpur, Jalaun, Kannauj, Pratapgarh, Etawah, Maharajganj, Firozabad, Shravasti, Lakhimpur-Kheri, Budaun, Bijnor, Pilibhit and Raebareli. These included terms lasting years, months and even a few days!”
Gupta, 39, originally hails from the state of Madhya Pradesh. He did electrical engineering before getting selected as an IAS.
Among other work, Gupta played a key role in liberating many families associated with the work of manual scavenging when he was at the helm in Budaun district. Those families were rehabilitated by providing with alternative methods of livelihood. Many villagers still remember the officer for his focus on sanitation, as a large number of dry latrines were converted into pour-flush ones during his tenure.
Limca Book of Records was first published in 1990. Limca, a popular soft drink brand in India, was then owned by Parle Group. The annual year book is now published with the support of Coca-Cola India, as this American soft drink giant bought Limca.