Times
of India: Hyderabad: Thursday, 18 September 2014.
The allotment
of All India Service (AIS) officers between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana is
getting murkier with the chief ministers of the two states deciding to petition
the Centre seeking retention of certain key IAS officers in their respective
cadres. While Chandrababu Naidu is batting for Ajay Sawhney, Ajay Jain and JSV
Prasad, to be retained in the AP cadre (they were allotted to Telangana in the
revised exercise by the Pratyush Sinha Committee last Monday), K Chandrasekhar
Rao is to take up the case of B P Acharya (allotted to AP) and a few other
officers to be retained in the Telangana cadre.
According to
sources, Naidu discussed the issue with chief secretary IYR Krishna Rao on
Wednesday and asked him to explore the possibilities of retaining these three
senior officers in the AP cadre. "The CM has volunteered to write to the
Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
with a request to continue these officers in the AP cadre. In case, it is not
considered, then we would seek their inter-state deputation from Telangana to
AP," said the sources.
Krishna Rao
has been asked to speak to his Telangana counterpart Rajiv Sharma and seek a
'no objection' letter from the latter for inter-state deputation of Ajay
Sawhney, JSV Prasad and Ajay Jain in case DoPT does not change their cadre. The
three officers concerned too were told to lodge a formal appeal with the DoPT
as that would give them three months time (needed to address the appeal) and
insulate them from being forced to join the cadre allotted to them. On his
part, KCR is seeking the inter-state deputation of planning department
principal secretary BP Acharya and at least two other officers who were shifted
from Telangana to AP in the changes made in the September 15 meeting in Delhi.
Meanwhile,
some IAS officers who were allotted a particular cadre without their consent
have decided to complain to DoPT stating that the AIS cadre allocation is
flawed. Another officer who too was allotted AP while his preference was
Telangana is all set to petition the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT)
perhaps by Thursday.
"The
Pratyush Sinha committee has messed up the entire cadre division by changing
the cadre of those officers who did not seek any change in their cadre. This,
after the committee had assured us that any changes would be limited to a
particular case but would not affect the entire batch or any other
officer," said a senior officer. Some other officers have filed
applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking the minutes of
the meetings that the Sinha committee held since July 10. The AIS allocation
fiasco is far from over, asserted the disgruntled officers.