Hyderabad: Close to three months after AP Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy handpicked senior IPS Telangana cadre officer Stephen Ravindra for the post of Intelligence chief of AP, there is no word from the Union ministry of home affairs regarding his inter-cadre deputation to AP. This has not only embarrassed the AP government but also ended up in the IPS officer reporting back to the Telangana cadre on Tuesday.
This after Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy himself took up the matter of his inter-cadre deputation with Union home minister Amit Shah during his very first meeting with him in June.
There is no clarity as to when the MHA will give the green signal or whether it will give it at all. For the time being, ACB Director General Kumar Vishwajeet is holding charge of the AP Intelligence wing.
Sources confirmed to Deccan Chronicle that Mr Ravindra reported back on Tuesday and resumed duty as IGP West zone, after being on leave for close to three months.
Soon after Mr Reddy made up his mind to have Mr Ravindra as his Intelligence chief in June, the 1999 batch officer took one-month leave and was stationed in Vijayawada. Thereafter, he kept extending his leave every 15 days, waiting for the Centre to give its approval but in vain.
With his extended leave coming to an end on August 31, the officer appears to have chosen to return to Telangana state instead of extending his leave once again, which has set off speculation in the IPS fraternity about whether the Centre will clear him to proceed on inter-cadre deputation at all. The Telangana state government had given its ‘no-objection’ to Mr Ravindra’s inter-cadre deputation in June, after which the proposal was sent to the MHA.
“Ravindra’s file is still under process, just like in the case of IAS officer Y. Srilakshmi, who too has applied for inter-cadre deputation to AP,” a senior government official from AP told this newspaper. When asked about the delay in the Centre clearing the proposal, the official chose not to comment.
Inter-cadre deputations of All India Services officers have to be cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) which is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It is learnt that the Centre is in two minds as the inter-cadre deputations are approved strictly on the grounds of extreme personal hardship or marriage to another All India Services officer. The worry is that if they make an exception in Mr Ravindra’s case, then it could set a precedent.
At the peak of the election season this year, the Election Commission had abruptly transferred then Intelligence chief A.B. Venkateswara Rao, after the YSRC leaders led by party general secretary V. Vijaya Sai Reddy had petitioned the ECI accusing the official of bias. Then Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had challenged the decision in the court but it refused to stall the order. Thereafter, another senior IPS officer, Mr Kumar Vishwajeet, was made the boss of the Intelligence wing.
Once the YSRC stormed to power, another IPS officer, Mr P.S.R. Anjaneyulu, who was on deputation with the Border Security Force (BSF), rushed in after he was reportedly assured that he would be made the Intelligence chief. But that did not happen as Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy chose Mr Ravindra. The matter now seems to be have been stuck in the MHA.
