Cities like Delhi, Mumbai and even Chandigarh are the places to be. On the other hand, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Ladakh are the boondocks. In the echelons of India’s vast bureaucracy, postings always carry an element of punishment or reward. It is a tool political masters wield to intimidate and control officers, especially those serving in foreign, administrative, police and revenue services.
These unofficial and unwritten rules have spawned terms such as garage postings, suitcase officers, ‘Kala Pani’. The Northeast, especially, has a bad rap. “The people in the Northeast call officers from central India suitcase officers. They live out of their suitcases hoping they will be transferred out soon,” says Vappala Balachandran, a national security expert and a retired IPS officer who served as special secretary, cabinet secretariat.
Even though there is an appointments committee at the Centre and committees under the chief minister’s office in the states, almost all the civil servants that ThePrint spoke to admitted that postings are assigned as per the whims of the ruling dispensation to put an officer in place. The process of transfers, removals and postings without any set rules is generally seen as a ‘shake up’, but it cuts both ways. To penalise an officer, governments often send them to a remote or less developed region to teach them a lesson. But, in the process, it creates an adverse perception for the specific location.
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‘No fairness, no rules’
Little has changed over the years, but the ambiguity over how postings are assigned came to the fore when the Ministry of Home Affairs recently transferred two IAS officers, a husband and wife, after a media report claimed they shut down a stadium early to walk their dog. The government did not initiate an inquiry into the allegation, but hours after the report was published, followed by social media outrage, the husband and wife were separated and given different postings. Senior IAS officer Sanjeev Khirwar was transferred to Ladakh, and his wife Rinku Dugga sent to Arunachal Pradesh.
Both these postings are part of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory) cadre of IAS, and both the officers belong to this cadre. Any officer under AGMUT cadre can be posted in the northeastern states or to the Union territories. However, the transfers were made out to be punishments, which in turn triggered outrage.
T R Raghunandan, a former IAS officer calls punishment transfers ad hoc and arbitrary: “There is no fairness, no nuance and no rules. This is the culmination of past practices, but things have become murkier under this government. They do not care about any officer or for law,” he said.
Raghunandan recounts his experiences when he and his wife, who is an Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS) officer, were posted in different locations. “It was a harrowing experience as my wife was pregnant. She was alone and we were about to lose our child. My son was born in an emergency situation. I had to face so much casteist slurs from superiors who questioned our inter-caste marriage,” he says.
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Unceremonious exits
Modern Indian history is full of examples of ‘powerful’ civil servants cut down to size by political leaders. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi removed his foreign secretary A. P. Venkateswaran, IFS, from the post in a public forum in 1986.
Venkateswaran had announced that Gandhi would be visiting SAARC capitals, but a month later the PM said he had no immediate plans to visit Islamabad. When a Pakistani journalist pointed out the discrepancies in the two statements, Gandhi said, “You will be talking to a new foregin secretary soon.” It led to the unceremonious exit of the officer despite his illustrious career in the service for 35 years.
Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman IPS officer faced ‘punishment’ transfers several times for holding her own and not acceding to the ruling dispensation’s demands. The series of transfers Bedi faced, started with her transfer from Delhi to Goa after she, as the DCP, traffic, fined powerful bureaucrats reportedly close to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
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Whistleblowers are targeted
More often than not, officers who threaten to upset the apple cart are awarded punishment postings. IAS officer Ashok Khemka, for instance, has been transferred 52 times, in 33 years of his service. Most of these transfers were because he played the role of whistleblower and identified irregularities in government departments.
While speaking to ThePrint, in an interview recently, Anil Swarup, ex-coal and education secretary and a retired IAS officer explained how he was transferred more than a decade ago for issuing an order to start a case against a political person in his cadre state. “There was a point when I became indifferent to transfers, and I took it as an assignment,” he said.
IPS officer D Roopa, who has been transferred at least 42 times in 20 years of her career, reportedly for standing up to corruption, says there is no such thing called punishment posting. “It is officers who have informally grouped certain postings as prime or nondescript and punishment posting.” Roopa, however, accepts that it is not only the tainted officers who are transferred, but also the whistleblowers, who get “nondescript” positions. “It is unfair to show some nondescript positions as punishment postings, because these places also need good officers.”
Not everyone sees it that way, and the term ‘Kala Pani’ is still bandied about to describe postings nobody wants. Crossing the black water will see one lose his or her respectability.
India has many such ‘Kala Pani’ postings that are not limited to the Northeast alone. States such as Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Kerala in east, central and south India respectively have many forested and under-developed regions where officers are routinely transferred as a way to teach them a lesson.
T R Ragunandan, who is now a guest lecturer in Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy Of Administration (Mussoorie ) points out how some states like Karnataka prefer a Kannadiga officer over a non-Kannadiga for certain positions and how some areas are treated as ‘Kalapani’ there. “Gulbarga (Kalaburagi) is one such district. Nobody wants to go there and the government heads the threat of a possible transfer to Gulbarga over their heads,” he says.
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Garage vs punishment postings
The officers ThePrint spoke to made a distinction between punishment and garage postings. Many have come to fear the humiliation of being benched or parked in a non-functional or less functional department. “We call it ‘garage posting’ as it means an officer has been ‘parked’ like a car in an underperforming department or ministry that does not have any importance,” says an IAS officer.
According to Anita Agnihotri, a retired IAS, who served as secretary to the social justice and empowerment ministry, such transfers, punishment or garage, never take place in public interest. “It hurts when the government arbitrarily does this to officers who follow certain basic principles and discipline of the service. The government can call for an explanation and initiate a departmental inquiry, but arbitrary transfers can never be the way.” She recalled an instance when she was summarily transferred while leading the Sundargarh (in Orissa) literacy campaign. As a result, the project suffered.
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The way forward
A senior IPS officer who has been transferred over 50 times, suggests that the government give them the means to seek redressal. “There should be a transfer review committee, before which the aggrieved officers may get a chance to present his or her case. The judicial recourse is so expensive and hassling that no officer now dares to take such a route,” says the officer.
Political leaders, too, are guilty of perpetuating such stereotypes by looking at some regions or departments as not worthy of their attention. Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chaddha’s recent comments in an interview said that non-performing officers can be transferred to the tribal affairs department sparked outrage. When the interviewer interjected and questioned the comment, Chaddha replied, “Yes I know that. I was just trying to explain. So he or she can be transferred to the horticulture or animal husbandry department for that matter”.
Another senior IPS officer, who served in the CBI and several other central government positions, believes that the government should be more proactive in addressing the negativity surrounding these transfers. “The government should make these locations look like prized postings to boost the regions. It should be presented as locations where only best performing officers would go. It is the government that creates such a stigma for locations like NE states and promotes it that way.”
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)