MEERUT, July 30 -- In a gesture of humility, IAS officer Rinku Singh Rahi, the newly appointed sub divisional magistrate of Puwaiyan tehsil in Shahjahanpur, made headlines on Tuesday by publicly performing sit-ups, holding his ears. The act came after he had earlier made a clerk of a local lawyer perform the same punishment for urinating in the open, triggering opposition from lawyers. Rahi, a 2022-batch IAS officer, had just taken charge as SDM in Puwaiyan on Tuesday. During inspection of tehsil premises, he spotted a clerk (munshi) urinating in the open. Offended by the act, the officer reprimanded the clerk and made him do sit-ups as punishment. The incident sparked a backlash from lawyers who were already protesting over other issues. They said the man had no choice but to relieve himself in the open due to the deplorable condition of the tehsil's public toilets. The SDM approached the lawyers and said while protests were allowed, the sound from loudspeakers should not reach the office. The lawyers raised the issue of the clerk being made to do sit-ups and questioned: "If the toilets are in such a filthy condition, where are the lawyers and clerks supposed to go?" As tensions rose, SDM Rahi acknowledged the fault of the administration and took an extraordinary step. In front of the protesting lawyers and staff, he held his ears and performed five sit-ups, declaring: "I, too, will not urinate in the open. I must follow the rules myself." He admitted that the poor state of sanitation in the tehsil was a failure on his part as an administrator. He assured the gathering that immediate steps would be taken to clean and repair the toilets, and pledged to improve overall hygiene on the tehsil premises. The video of the IAS officer doing sit-ups went viral on social media....