New Delhi: In West Bengal, for the first time since 2013, an IAS officer batch has got posted as Sub-Divisional Officers directly after completing their two-year training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. Before this, IAS officer batches were posted as Officers on Special Duty at the state headquarters. Now, under the BJP government, the new batch has been posted as SDOs in different districts.
The West Bengal government, in a notification issued on August 28, appointed 11 IAS officers of the 2024 batch as Sub-Divisional Officers (SDOs) after they completed their Phase-II training at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA). The appointments have been made with immediate effect and will continue until further orders. The officers were earlier serving as Assistant Magistrates and Assistant Collectors (AM&AC) in different districts of the state.
The move means that the newly trained officers will now take charge of subdivisions across the state and get direct exposure to field administration early in their careers.
“For an IAS officer, this was the right thing to do. Across the country, IAS officers are generally given field postings as SDOs. Here, they were being kept at the headquarters and appointed as Officers on Special Duty (OSDs). Things are changing now, and this is very important for their career progression. This is happening after 13 years. The IAS association had been raising this issue for a long time,” Manoj Agarwal, Chief secretary of West Bengal, told ThePrint.
Change after 13 years
The earlier system can be seen in the case of IAS officer Jitin Yadav, a 2016-batch West Bengal cadre officer who is currently the District Magistrate of Cooch Behar. After completing his Phase-II training, he spent 13 weeks as an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Chemicals and Fertilizers in the Union government before returning to West Bengal where he served as an Officer on Special Duty in the Transport Department from October 2018 to July 2019. He was subsequently posted as SDO, Mathabhanga, in Cooch Behar.
“Earlier, IAS officer trainees used to spend about three months in Delhi as part of their training, where they were attached to Union government ministries as Assistant Secretaries. That programme has now been restructured to eight weeks. The idea is to give young officers exposure to how the Central government functions and to policymaking before they move into field administration,” Yadav said.
The Centre’s Assistant Secretary Programme was introduced in 2015 and since 2023 it has been structured as an eight-week programme before Phase-II training at LBSNAA.
“A direct field posting at this stage gives officers an opportunity to handle a subdivision and deal directly with people and local administration. That kind of field experience is important for an officer’s career and helps build the experience needed for the responsibilities they take on later,” he said.
Among the postings, Khushhali Solanki has been appointed SDO of Arambagh in Hooghly, Rohit Tyagi will take charge as SDO of Contai in Purba Medinipur, Pragati Nautiyal has been posted to Bolpur in Birbhum, while Soham Teberiwal will be the SDO of Uluberia in Howrah.
The remaining officers have also been posted across subdivisions in different districts. Patil Vinay Sunil will serve as SDO, Bishnupur in Bankura; Deepesh Gaur as SDO, Domkal in Murshidabad; Akashdeep as SDO, Raghunathpur in Purulia; Vinayak Kumar as SDO, Kalna in Purba Bardhaman; Dipak Meena as SDO, Manbazar in Purulia; Bratati Dutta as SDO, Bongaon in North 24 Parganas; and Matendra Kumar Meena as SDO, Dinhata in Cooch Behar.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)