Dilli Ka Babu: Transfer politics

The Uttar Pradesh government’s transfer policy has been the subject of comment by the Allahabad high court. The matter came up in the case of senior IAS officer Rama Raman, who had been barred by the court in July from functioning as the chairman of Noida, Greater Noida and the Yamuna Expressway Authority. While hearing a PIL challenging Mr Raman’s long stint in these positions, the court had asked the state chief secretary to put appoint Mr Raman on waitlist and appoint another officer, stating that no official should hold all key posts in the NCR region for a long time. The government had then appointed senior IAS officer Sanjay Aggarwal to replace Mr Raman.

But now it has come full circle. Within a fortnight of the high court dismissing the PIL which had challenged Mr Raman’s appointment in Noida, the Akhilesh Yadav government has brought back the trusted IAS officer to his old posts. Clearly, given the babu’s clout with the establishment, Mr Aggarwal’s appointment was only a stop-gap arrangement to follow the court’s earlier directive until the matter was finally resolved.

Stalled report

The department of personnel and training (DoPT) is fretting over the delay in the restructuring of cadres of all Group A services, reportedly due to the lack of response from the cadre controlling authorities of the Group A services to the task force set up for the purpose. In August last year, the government had appointed a task force headed by T. Jacob, a 1984-batch IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre to study the cadre structures of all organised Group “A” services of the Government of India and suggest ways to mitigate career stagnation of officers of various services. It was meant to submit its report within three months.

Sources say that most likely the deadline will not be met since the cadre controlling authorities have failed to provide the required statistical data and threshold analysis for the task force, despite a DoPT memo issued at the time to respond within 15 days. Since that didn’t happen, the department has been forced now to send a “stern” reminder for cadre authorities to furnish their comments and suggestions to the Jacob-headed task force. Will they oblige?

CBI appointments

In the last few weeks of CBI director Anil Kumar Sinha’s tenure, the agency has seen a burst of activity. We’ve had news of the appointment of four new joint directors, all from the 1996 batch of the IPS. They include Shankha Brata Bagchi from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, Navin Kumar Singh from Jharkhand, Manish Kumar Sinha from J&K and Bhanu Bhaskar from Uttar Pradesh.

According to sources, the tenures of these officers range from three months to almost two years. While Mr Singh has been appointed until January 2017, Mr Sinha will be in the position until October 2017. The other two IPS officers’ tenure will last until August 2018.