Suspense continues over next Chief Secretary of AP

27 Feb, 2014 17:38 IST|Sakshi
Suspense continues over next Chief Secretary of AP

 

Uncertainty looms over appointment of new chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh as the state remains virtually non-existent for all practical purposes.

Incumbent Chief Secretary Prasanna Kumar Mohanty, an IAS officer of 1979 batch, is due to retire tomorrow on attaining the age of superannuation. Though it is widely being expected that Mohanty may get a three-month extension since the state bifurcation process is on, he is said to be reluctant to continue.

I don't want to continue even for a minute (after 28th), Mohanty has been reportedly telling his junior bureaucrats. Mohanty reportedly told them that he would hand over the charge to another officer and retire on the due date.

Had the Chief Minister been in place, he would have taken a call on the appointment of Chief Secretary, the head of state bureaucracy, by now.

However, the caretaker chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy is said to have refused to take a decision on the matter when a set of names of eligible officers was referred to him. M. Samuel of 1978 batch tops the list but he is set to retire at the end of March. So, he is out of contention.

I V Subba Rao and I Y R Krishna Rao, both 1979 batch officers, are next in line for the Chief Secretary's post apart from two other officers. However, Subba Rao is currently on a foreign assignment with the UNICEF in Paris and thus ruled out for appointment as CS. He will be in service till the end of August 2015. Krishna Rao, currently the second-in-command as Chief Commissioner of Land Administration, becomes the front-runner for the CS' post.

He will retire only at the end of January 2016 and thus will have become the natural choice to head the state bureaucracy. His batch mates Chandana Khan and J Ramanand have shorter tenures of service left and hence may not be considered, sources in the General Administration Department said.

- PTI

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