Dilli Ka Babu
Babus forever
Retired babus never fade away; they just come back in a different avatar. That does seem to be the case in Punjab and Haryana. In Haryana, babu-watchers say, during chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s seven-year-old rule, all senior IAS officers who retired were promptly re-employed in the government. The state information commission seems to be the favoured destination. In recent months, retiring chief secretary Urvashi Gulati was accommodated in the commission which happens to be headed by her husband Naresh Gulati. Similarly, another IAS officer, Meenaxi Anand Chaudhary, was made information commissioner after her retirement. Among other notables “rewarded” by the state government are H.S. Rana, Yudhvir Singh, S.K. Monga, G.V. Gupta and K.C. Sharma.
The story is no different in Punjab where the Badals have reportedly rehabilitated 13 retired officials. Here too the favoured destination of the retirees is the state Information Commission or the Right to Service Commission.
Forced to leave?
Himachal Pradesh’s administration is under huge pressure due to the government’s inability to retain its IAS officers — most of whom have quit the service to work with international agencies. In recent years, at least six IAS officers have quit for greener pastures. And recently, at least one Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS officer, Rahul Anand, is on the verge of losing his job for failing to report for duty after his application for leave was turned down last year.
Apparently, the 1996-batch IAS officer first took five years off as study leave and then sought further leave of three years as he had got an assignment with the IMF. The government, however, believes that his absence for an extended period should be considered as his resignation! Last year, another senior IAS officer, Manisha Sridhar, had quit the IAS after being served a similar notice. She chose to resign. But it’s clear that the state government is taking a hard line with its babus.
Women at top
It’s easier for a woman bureaucrat to become chief secretary of a state than Cabinet secretary at the Centre. While we’ve seen quite a few women heading state bureaucracies, we’ve not seen a woman at the top of the heap at the Centre (Sudha Pillai, perhaps, came closest to becoming Cabinet secretary in 2009, but that’s another story). On the other hand, Minnie Mathew has just become Andhra Pradesh’s new chief secretary, the second woman in the state to hold the top position.
In her eight-month term, among other onerous responsibilities, Ms Mathew will also oversee the multi-agency probes against top bureaucrats.
Ms Mathew has joined the growing club of women chief secretaries that includes the likes of Shailaja Chandra (Delhi’s first woman chief secretary), successive women chief secretaries in Himachal Pradesh, former Tamil Nadu chief secretary S. Malathi and Neera Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.
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