New Delhi: Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from the Indian Administrative Service to protest against the Centre’s treatment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, has been asked to resume his duties immediately until his resignation is accepted.Gopinathan was issued a notice by the Personnel Department of Daman and Diu (where he was posted), PTI reported. The notice cited Department of Personnel and Training rules, which say a government officer’s resignation “becomes effective when it is accepted”. “Therefore, you are hereby directed to continue attending to your assigned duties immediately, till a decision is taken on your resignation,” the notice said.The notice was delivered to the guest house where Gopinathan had been staying, since he was no longer in Silavassa, where he was posted. The IAS officer submitted his resignation on August 21, and told PTI that he was unaware of the notice.Gopinathan said that he could not continue to do his job while seeing that the bureaucratic machinery was being misused to curtail people’s rights and freedoms, and there was an ‘Emergency’ in place. “This is not Yemen, this is not the 1970s, that you can deny basic rights to an entire people and nobody will say anything about it. It has been 20 days since there has been a lockdown on a whole region with all kinds of restrictions. I cannot remain silent over this even if this means I have to resign from the IAS in order to speak freely and that is what I have done,” he told The Wire while resigning.After his resignation, efforts were made to discredit his opinion by saying that he had charges of misconduct against him. Gopinathan told The Wire that old issues are being raked up again to set a ‘convenient narrative’ about his ‘principled decision’ to resign from the service. He said he had already responded to the show cause notice on allegations involving insubordination, adoption of dilatory tactics and dereliction of duty.