Dilli Ka Babu: Special duty for special babus

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration is now appointing top bureaucrats as officers on special duty in government departments a few weeks prior to naming them as secretaries. The recent top level appointments of five secretaries is in keeping with this trend, hitherto usually seen in the private sector. Though they were named as OSDs, they will become secretaries in their respective ministries and departments.

Of course, the position of OSD is not new in a government set up but earlier they were attached to a minister and not to a department. In Modi sarkar, OSDs are being appointed for a ministry or department, another difference is that while the OSD attached to a minister has little policy-making power, the ones with the departments contribute to policy decisions.

Some insist that this practice which used to be confined to only few offices, began getting further traction when the erstwhile UPA government appointed Raghuram Rajan, then chief economic adviser, ministry of finance, as an OSD in the RBI for a period of three weeks prior to his taking over as governor. Since then, it has become the favoured route of appointing senior level officials.

Final countdown for new chiefs

The countdown has begun as the government prepares to pick the new heads of the IB and R&AW by mid-December. The chief of R&AW, Rajinder Khanna, and his internal intelligence counterpart Dineshwar Sharma of the IB are due to retire at the end of the month.

Sources say that the government is keen to continue Mr Sharma’s services in view of the present Pakistan and China scenario. He is an expert on Pakistan and Islamic terrorism and has closely worked with the all-powerful national security adviser Ajit Doval. But, if insiders are to be believed, Mr Sharma, 1979 batch IPS officer of Kerala cadre, is not keen on an extension. If true, it leaves the field to two of the agency’s special directors, S.K. Sinha and Rajiv Jain, and Mumbai police commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar.

In the race for the top post at R&AW, sources say that Anil Kumar Dhasmana, a 1981-batch IPS officer, is among those short-listed to replace Mr Khanna. But all calculations may go awry. Recently the government pulled a surprise when it appointed Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rakesh Asthana as the interim CBI director. It’s the first time in 10 years that the CBI does not have a full-time chief. Since then, no one is willing to bet on what the government will do.

No respite for whistleblower

A whistleblower’s travails are never over. Just last week, after months of waiting, Indian Forest Service officer of the Uttarakhand cadre, Sanjiv Chaturvedi, got a long-awaited posting to the capital. But his relief was short-lived. Within hours, the Uttarakhand government reversed its decision.

Mr Chaturvedi had been without a posting since August when he shifted to the Uttarakhand cadre. Almost a fortnight ago, he had written to former chief secretary Shatrughan Singh requesting that he be posted in the vigilance department.

For over a year, the Uttarakhand government had been doing a series of flip-flops regarding Mr Chaturvedi leading many to assume that it was unsure how to handle the high-profile officer. After Mr Chaturvedi had requested for a transfer in cadre from Haryana to Uttarakhand, the Uttarakhand government in November last year issued him a no-objection certificate to pave the way for his joining the Delhi government where CM Arvind Kejriwal had been trying to get him posted as his OSD. However, in January this year, the NOC was cancelled by the Harish Rawat government which some alleged was done at the behest of the Centre with whom Mr Chaturvedi was at loggerheads for having denied him his service-related benefits.