Dilli Ka Babu: Returning to the cadre

The government has been pruning the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, quietly curtailing the tenure of many officials and sending them back or putting them on hold. It has cut short the tenure of M.K. Tripathi, a 2000-batch Indian Forest Service officer of the Karnataka cadre, as private secretary to housing and urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu, and placed him on compulsory wait without assigning any reason for this decision. He has been replaced by Saurabh Gaur from the parliamentary affairs ministry (also headed by Mr Naidu).

Mr Tripathi’s is not a lone case. Sources says the recent meeting of the Appointments Committee of Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi also cut short the tenure of another private secretary, V. Ponnuraj, a 2000-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, working with law minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda.

Also exiting is Sanjiv Kumar, a 1986-batch IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre, who is joint secretary in the ministry of environment. There are some others too who have been prematurely repatriated to their state cadres, ostensibly to “avail the benefit of promotion”.

What it does show is that the exodus of senior babus from the Centre to the states continues. So far at least 65 IAS and Indian Police Service officers have returned to their parent cadres or have been prematurely repatriated. The trend is unlikely to change.

Back from the cold

The Centre named Archana Ramasundaram, the 1980-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, as the new director-general of the Sashastra Seema Bal, making her the first woman to head a paramilitary force.

The appointment ends a period of strife for the police officer in which her earlier appointment as additional director of Central Bureau of Investigation in 2014 was challenged in the Supreme Court by her own state government, which even suspended her only to revoke the order later.

At the time it was believed that Ms Ramasundaram became a victim of politics in her cadre state. Her husband, an IAS officer, was widely perceived to be close to the rival Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, which reportedly displeased the Jayalalithaa government enough to stop her entry into the CBI, despite the backing of the then CBI director Ranjit Sinha. But things have changed since then, and she is likely to have a smoother run in her latest assignment.

Not so unusual

The vacancy at the department of industrial policy and promotion created by the appointment of its secretary Amitabh Kant as CEO of Niti Aayog has been filled by Ramesh Abhishek, 1982-batch Bihar cadre IAS officer, slated to take over at the end of the month when Mr Kant retires and takes over his new prestigious assignment.

Some observers, however, were surprised when the government decided to give the inevitable two-month extension a bit late to finance secretary and secretary expenditure Ratan P. Watal, though he too is retiring on February 29. The Budget demands it.

Though it’s unusual for the government to extend the tenure of secretary-level officers after they retire, two factors probably influenced the decision in Mr Watal’s case. It so happens that he was slated to retire on the very day the Union Budget is being presented in Parliament.

But there is also the view that since the expenditure department is likely to play a major role in the implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission’s report, it would not be wise to bring in a new official at this critical juncture. So the continuity principle worked in Mr Watal’s favour!