It’s five days since A. Revanth Reddy took oath as the Chief Minister of Telangana, but he is yet to get his full team of officials in the Chief Minister’s Office.
There are reports that senior IAS officer V. Seshadri has been appointed as the Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, but orders to this effect are yet to be issued. Mr. Seshadri is, however, attending all the review meetings that are being conducted by the new Chief Minister.
The CMO, which is considered a mini-Secretariat in itself needs at at least one Principal Secretary and three Secretary-level officials to handle the day-to-day affairs of the Chief Minister. Other than Mr. Seshadri, the CMO is nearly empty barring full-timers Smitha Sabharwal and Priyanka Verghese continuing in their posts as CMO Secretary and Officer on Special Duty to the Chief Minister respectively.
The reason: the decision of former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to appoint several retired bureaucrats as advisors to manage the affairs of different departments. But, since the new government is in place, Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari has issued orders rescinding the extension of tenure of these advisors given by the previous government while the relatively newly appointed advisors had been shown the door.
During Mr. Rao’s tenure, retired IAS officer S. Narsing Rao was appointed as Principal Secretary and year 2000 batch officer Rahul Bojja was appointed as Secretary to Chief Minister.
K. Bhupal Reddy, former IFS officer, was the Special Secretary in the CMO while P. Raja Sekhar Reddy, another Special Secretary to CM was previously in the Employees Provident Fund Organisation under Ministry of Labour. He resigned and joined the CMO after his five-year term. Official sources said that the new Chief Minister will have to go for reshuffle of the bureaucracy and choose his team. With the Congress party making it clear that its first priority was implementation of the Six Guarantees, the onus would be to have a robust mechanism with team of committed officers to oversee the programme’s progress.
There have been instances of several bureaucrats serving in the same post for over six to seven years. Many IAS officers were given additional charge and the arrangement went on for many years.
The BRS government from 2014 re-appointed several retired bureaucrats as advisors. Notable among them were Rajiv Sharma, Somesh Kumar, S.K. Joshi, A.K. Goel, A. Rama Lakshman, B.V. Papa Rao, K.V. Ramana Chary, G. R. Reddy (retired IES), A.K. Khan and Anurag Sharma (both retired IPS). Two other retired Special Chief Secretary level officers Adhar Sinha and Rani Kumudini were reappointed and continued in the same posts they held on the day of superannuation. The All India Civil list have 170 bureaucrats allotted to Telangana. The Chief Secretary A Santhi Kumari is 1989 batch IAS officer.
