Prasanth Nair

Prasanth Nair (also known as N. Prasanth) is an Indian civil servant and a 2007-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Kerala cadre. He gained public attention during his tenure as the District Collector of Kozhikode from 2015 to 2017, where he was given the nickname "Collector Bro" for his informal, social-media-driven approach to public administration. As Collector of Kozhikode, he launched the Compassionate Kozhikode initiative, under which the free food programme Operation Sulaimani was introduced.

Prasath Nair secured All India Rank 4 in the 2007 Civil Services Examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) .

Early life and education Prasanth grew up in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He graduated in law from the Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram, affiliated with the University of Kerala. The project was named after sulaimani, a spiced black tea popular in the Malabar region.

Another initiative during his tenure was a crowdsourced drive to clean the 14-acre Pisharikavu pond in Koyilandy, in which volunteers who participated were offered a plate of Malabar biryani by the district administration.

2024 suspension In November 2024, the Kerala government suspended Prasanth, then serving as Special Secretary in the Agriculture Department, for alleged violation of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968. The action followed a social media post by Prasanth accusing Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) A. Jayathilak of preparing a report unfairly blaming him for the disappearance of files related to the Unnathi project, a Kerala government initiative for the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes students, of which Prasanth had been the CEO.