Of the 18 Gujarat IAS officers in the Central government, 4 serve in the PMO, 4 in the finance ministry and 2 in the home ministry.
New Delhi: Ever since Narendra Modi led the BJP to victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and moved from being Gujarat chief minister to India’s prime minister, there has been much speculation about the civil servants from his home state in the central government.
Who are the IAS and IPS officers from Gujarat who are key to PM Modi’s governance agenda? How many of them are serving in the central government? What are the positions they occupy?
Information accessed by ThePrint under the RTI Act and independent enquiries reveal that only 18 of the 492 IAS officers — about 3.65 per cent — serving in the central government are from the prime minister’s home state.
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But more than the number, the significance lies in the positions these officers occupy. Four of these 18 are in the all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office, four in the finance ministry, and two in the home ministry.
“It is obviously not unheard of for politicians to appoint officers they like. But in this government, this trend has been taken to another level,” a Rajasthan-cadre officer told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity.
“There is already this perception that all the power in the government is centralised in the PMO, and that is packed with Gujarat cadre officers. Even in other important ministries, you appoint them. Then what does it do to the morale of the services in general?”
At the power centre
Additional secretary Arvind Kumar Sharma of the 1988 batch is the senior-most of the Gujarat cadre officials in the PMO. Rajiv Topno of the 1996 batch is private secretary to the PM, Rajender Kumar of the 2004 batch is director in the PMO, and S.R. Bhavsar of the 2009 batch is OSD (officer on special duty) to the PM.
In addition to these four, P.K. Misra, a 1972-batch officer who retired from service in 2008, was re-appointed as additional principal secretary to the PM for five years in 2014. Between 2001 and 2004, Misra served as principal secretary to Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat.
Finance and home affairs
Hasmukh Adhia is the senior-most of the Gujarat cadre officers serving in the finance ministry. The 1981-batch officer is India’s finance secretary.
Two officers of the 1985 batch, Atanu Chakraborty and Girish Chandra Murmu, also serve in key posts in this ministry. Chakraborty is secretary of the investment and public asset management department, while Murmu is special secretary in the revenue department.
S. Aparna, a 1988-batch officer, is the executive director — an additional secretary-rank post — in the economic affairs department.
In the ministry of home affairs, V. Thiruppugazh of the 1991 batch is serving at a joint-secretary rank, while 2003-batch officer Pravinbhai Khodabhai Solanki is director, census operations.
Other important positions
Three other Gujarat cadre officers occupy important positions.
Anil Gopishankar Mukim, a 1985-batch officer, is mines secretary; Guruprasad Mohapatra of the 1986 batch is chairman of the Airports Authority of India under the ministry of civil aviation; and Anita Karwal of the 1987 batch is chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education, under the ministry of human resource development.
Investigative and security agencies
This trend also extends to the top IPS appointees in investigative and security agencies.
Rakesh Asthana, deputy director of the CBI, is a 1984-batch Gujarat cadre officer. He is currently locked in a public feud with his boss, director Alok Verma.
Among CBI’s joint directors, A.K. Sharma (1987) and Praveen Sinha (1988) also belong to Gujarat cadre. Sharma was recently in the news for allegedly diluting the ‘look out’ notice against Vijay Mallya, and Congress president Rahul Gandhi has gone so far as to call him PM Modi’s “blue-eyed boy”.
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A.K. Patnaik, a 1983-batch IPS officer from Gujarat, is the CEO of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID). He was appointed in 2016 after the post had been vacant for two years. He is the son-in-law of former PM Manmohan Singh.