GHMC chief says IAS allotment arbitrary

HYDERABAD: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) commissioner Somesh Kumar on Tuesday told the Central Administrative Tribunal that many IAS officers, including himself, were adversely affected due to poor handling of the cadre allotment process.
Echoing the voice of the GHMC chief, senior counsel D V Sitarama Murthy told the tribunal bench of B V Rao (member, judicial) and Ranjana Chowdary (member, administration) that IAS officers were of homogeneous class, and creating further groups among them was wrong.Somesh was allotted to AP in the recent cadre allotment despite his preference for Telangana.
The senior counsel said that authorities divided IAS officers as promoted IAS officers, direct recruits, natives of AP and Telangana despite knowing that such division of IAS cadre officers that too on discriminatory lines was unlawful and unconstitutional.
To a query from the bench as to what would happen if all the existing seniors opt for one state, Sitarama Murthy said that reasonable amount of classification could be allowed to ensure that each state get a fine blend of seniors, juniors and trainees etc.
But for arriving at it, the approach should be rational and balanced and definitely not unilateral, he said, citing scores of judgments delivered by Supreme Court. Responding to another query, the senior counsel agreed that a junior IAS officer cannot swap places with a chief secretary rank IAS officer, but quickly added that the guidelines prepared for swapping batch-wise, pay band-wise etc were not in tune with laws.
The bench posted the case to Wednesday for hearing the version of the central government.