Telangana, Andhra Pradesh in a fix over AIS allotments

As part of distribution of united AP cadre of AIS officers on Friday, the Centre has allotted 66 IAS and 119 IPS officers to the AP cadre, while 128 IAS and 92 IPS to Telangana cadre.

Though the allocation guidelines stipulated that all officers will report to their new cadre immediately, there was no response from the  officers on Saturday.

Officers were of the view that since it was a weekend, they could wait till Monday to decide on their future course of action and act accordingly. Since the guidelines allowed officers to opt for swapping with another officer  in the same category besides cadre shift on ‘spouse grounds’, several officers  were busy tracing officers in the allotment list with whom they could exchange their posts.

Senior IAS officers Manmohan Singh, G. Anantha Ramu, S.S. Rawat, Jayesh Ranjan, A. Vidya Sagar, Somesh Kumar, Rajat Bhargava, Vikas Raj want to swap their cadres.

This apart, there are few couples who too are seeking same cadre on ‘spouse grounds’. Noted couples among them are B.P. Acharya-Ranjeev Acharya, Ajay Mishra-Shalini Mishra etc. Another couple M. Malakondaiah-Poonam Malakondaiah were allotted to AP cadre, but the TS government wants Poonam to be continued in TS cadre.

With regard to IPS officers, Stephen Raveendra, Santosh Mehra, etc are also seeking cadre change.

Besides, some officers like Somesh Kumar and A. Vidya Sagar had already moved Central Administrative Tribunal seeking stay orders on their change in state-cadre. This apart, one IAS officer, J.S.V. Prasad was asked to work for AP, while four IAS officers were asked to work for TS till a final decision is taken by DoPT.

The government has given 15 days time to give options on swapping cadre through mutual consent and on spouse grounds and the final allocation list will be issued within 45 days. However, official sources said there may be less than 10 per cent changes from the state-cadre lists issued on Friday.