By Desaraju Surya
AMARAVATI: Call it unrest or resentment, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers of Andhra Pradesh cadre are a disgruntled lot as signs are very clear that bureaucracy in the state is managed badly.
They have made this clearly known to the state Chief Secretary K Vijayanand and are now seeking to petition their case to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu as well.
Filling up of cadre posts, meant for senior IAS officers, with retired officers appears to be the immediate cause of the unrest.
Special Chief Secretary, Agriculture, post is given to retired IAS officer Buditi Rajsekhar.
Retired Indian Forest Service officer Chiranjiv Choudhury has been appointed as Secretary, Food Processing.
Another retired IAS officer Rama Shankar Naik has been made the Commissioner of Fisheries.
And, retired Indian Railway Traffic Service officer Arja Srikanth has been appointed as Special Commissioner in the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan in New Delhi.
“All these are IAS cadre posts and posting retired officers in those posts is a clear violation of norms. Are there no competent officers in service for those posts,” wondered a senior bureaucrat.
This is also depriving senior IAS officers of rightful postings.
If the retired officers were to be rehabilitated, they could be appointed as advisors, the bureaucrat noted.
A group of senior IAS officers met the Chief Secretary recently and conveyed their displeasure over the issue.
Interestingly, the IAS officers are also resenting the continuation of Vijayanand as Special Chief Secretary, Energy Department, in full additional charge.
“In no other state is such a crucial post handled by the Chief Secretary as additional charge,” senior bureaucrats point out.
Vijayanand, who has spent over a decade of his 33-year career in the energy sector, is being continued with full additional charge as Special Chief Secretary ostensibly because of his expertise in ‘power deals’.
Fact-of-the-matter is that the incumbent Chief Secretary doesn’t seem to command any respect from his fellow bureaucrats.
“He is obviously not expecting to command any respect,” IAS officers aver.