Bezbaruah, as the state education secretary in 1993-94, shared a somewhat rocky relationship with the then education minister and current Chief Minister, Sahib Singh. This is what is surprising about Singh's claim a couple of days ago that he had asked for the ED chief -- ``an honest, upright and efficient officer'' -- to be reverted to the Delhi government.

Bezbaruah and Singh had very fundamental differences on policy, ranging from some appointments of teachers to the criteria to be used for the government to recognise schools and colleges.

The corridors of bureaucratic power -- which even in the best of times are rife with rumours and good ole gossip -- is abuzz with talk of the time when Bezbaruah did not take kindly to one of his juniors,Shakti Sinha who was then the state's education director. At the heart of the problem lay the contention that Sahib Singh preferred deal with Sinha rather than the `uncooperative' education secretary.

Sinha has since moved to the Prime Minister's Office as secretary to Vajpayee. And now Sinha's hand is being seen in some quarters as the one responsible for his former boss being given the relatively less powerful job of Delhi transport secretary.

Bureaucrats in the know but who did not want to be identified by name recall that in 1994, Sahib Singh as education minister had even written to then chief minister Madan Lal Khurana seeking Bezbaruah's removal from the Delhi administration. Sahib Singh had reportedly started bypassing Bezbaruah and dealing directly with Sinha. And this had reportedly become a source of conflict between Bezbaruah and Sinha, with the junior officer being pulled up quite a few times, sources said.

Sources added that Bezbaruah had, however, devised methods of fobbing off suchrequests. But things came to a head around mid-1994 when some important policies were being formulated. One of them was about recognition of schools by the Delhi Administration -- the criteria and the guidelines. It was on this issue that irreconcilable differences developed between Bezbaruah and Sahib Singh.

``It is not unusual for a bureaucrat and a minister to differ. But Bezbaruah and Sahib Singh had started fighting over everything,'' sources in the education department say.

Now, there are a few takers for Sahib Singh's professed conviction that Bezbaruah is the man of the hour where Delhi's transport problems are concerned.

Sinha, who stayed in the education department till November '94, when contacted by The Indian Express, admitted to some differences with Bezbaruah but added that there was nothing that could have had any major impact. ``And one thing I can say is that he never pulled me up, either in writing or verbally,'' Sinha said.

Sahib Singh, reached for comment by this paper,said that he never had any major problems with the officer. ``Bezbaruah did not have any differences with me but he did have differences with officers in his department,'' the chief minister said.

``I was a new minister and wanted things to be done very fast. The official machinery worked at a very slow pace and that is what troubled me. After all, I only have five years to work while he has till he is 60. Bezbaruah worked at the pace of a typical bureaucrat. I had wanted things done in a flash. Later, I came to terms with the fact that the official machinery does not work at my pace. And if I had something against Bezbaruah, I would not have given him a good Confidential Report,'' Sahib Singh said.