After UP chief secretary's tenure extension; Rajasthan gets new CS & MP may be the next

NEW DELHI: Sudhansh Pant, an IAS officer of 1991 batch was appointed as the new chief secretary of Rajasthan on Sunday barely hours after he was suddenly repatriated to his home cadre. This came a day after the tenure of 1984 batch IAS officer, D S Mishra got a six-month extension as the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh.

There is high speculation in bureaucracy over the possibility of the Centre sending another top IAS official from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh to become the new chief secretary. Currently, Veera Rana, a 1998 batch IAS has got the additional charge of chief secretary in the state where BJP came back to power with more number of seats in the recently held assembly elections. Rana, the second woman chief secretary of MP, is due for retirement in March 2024.

Sources said the Centre may soon take a call on a new chief secretary.

Meanwhile, Pant’s repatriation and appointment as chief secretary of Rajasthan has stumped many considering that he was eighth on the order of seniority among IAS officers of the Rajasthan cadre. He has surpassed the six other senior officers of his cadre — Subodh Agarwal, V Srinivas, Subhra Singh, Rajeshwar Singh, Rohit Kumar Singh and Sanjay Malhotra. Srinivas, Rohit Kumar Singh and Sanjay Malhora will continue at Centre as secretaries.

For Pant, it is the third successive shift or appointment in a year. First he was brought to the Centre in October 2022 as OSD in the shipping ministry and was later made the secretary. Six months later he was shifted to the health ministry as secretary.

Meanwhile, senior bureaucrats said they were expecting a reshuffle at the secretary level appointments in the near future.

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