By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 18 Aug: As many as 17 IAS officers are expected to join service in the state soon, even as some senior officers are preparing to proceed on leave. At the same time, senior IAS officer Sowjanya has been already been relieved for deputation with the Centre. Although proceeding on Central deputation, Sowjanya will join as Joint Director at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNA), Mussoorie. Sowjanya has been the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttarakhand for some years and has been replaced by Dilip Jawalkar. Jawalkar has also been given charge as Secretary, Finance and Civil Aviation. Another charge as Secretary, Information Technology, also held by Sowjanya has gone to Shailesh Bagoli.
Secretary, Health, Radhika Jha is set to proceed on study leave to UK. Additional Secretary Dr Ashish Srivastava has also applied for study leave and is also expected to go abroad. Jha’s application for study leave is under process currently as per sources in the Personnel Department. At the same time, IAS Officer Savin Bansal has returned from abroad and is now awaiting posting. Bansal was also on study leave.
Most of the 17 IAS officers set to join the state cadre of the All India service are those who have been promoted to the IAS. Many of them are already posted as Additional Secretaries with the government and may continue to hold the same charge despite cadre promotion to the IAS.
It may be recalled that Uttarakhand has a total sanctioned strength of 126 IAS officers. However, against the sanctioned number of posts, only 82 are deployed at present. Despite this shortage, the work distribution among the IAS officers continues to be rather unbalanced. While some are “burdened” with a heavy work load but creamy appointments, others are left with charge of a handful of lightweight departments such as Languages, Protocol, etc.
