New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are two of the largest cadres of All India Services (AIS) in the country. Yet, of the 37 officers empaneled to become secretaries at the Centre Thursday, only one officer (IAS Vennecaganti Radha, 1984 batch) belonged to Maharashtra, and none to UP.
This is part of a larger trend. Data obtained by ThePrint shows that until October 2024, of the AIS officers working at the Centre as secretary, additional secretary and joint secretary, only 7 were from Maharashtra and 12 from UP.
The Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service (IPS), and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS) together form the three All India Services.
Uttar Pradesh tops the list with highest cadre strength (652 IAS, 541 IPS, 217 IFoS), while Maharashtra is at fourth (435 IAS, 317 IPS, 206 IFoS).
But in proportionate terms, the number of officers from the two states working at the Centre is much lower than smaller cadres like Odisha (584 AIS officers), Haryana (417) and Kerala (510), but which have 11, 9 and 11 officers working at the Centre in the above-mentioned three posts.
Gujarat, which has a medium-sized cadre of 646 officers, has 12 of them in Delhi. Similarly, Assam and Meghalaya (AM cadre), with an authorised strength of 600 AIS officers, has 11 such officers.
With 27 AIS officers, it is the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union territories) cadre—the second largest after UP in terms of cadre strength with (542 IAS, 457 IPS, 302 IFoS)—which has the highest representation at the Centre in these posts.
AGMUT is followed by Bihar and MP with 19 and 18 such officers in these posts until October last year. In terms of authorised cadre strength, Bihar has 675 sanctioned posts, while MP is the third largest with 1,074 sanctioned posts.
While the problem of officers not coming to the Centre from states on deputation as per the Central Deputation Reserve—which determines the percentage of officers a state is mandated to release for central deputation—is a long-drawn and nearly ubiquitous one, a host of reasons determine which states do better than the others on this front.
Officers’ willingness to come to the Centre as opposed to stay in their own cadres, the patronage factor, i.e., senior officers of a certain cadre posted in significant central positions tend to attract more officers from their state, and the Centre’s relationship with a state are important considerations in these cases.
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Officers’ willingness
The primary factor determining how many officers from a particular state come to the Centre is their own inclination. Officers from big states like UP or from prosperous and developed states like Maharashtra, which have several opportunities within the state, are reluctant to come to Delhi. Their children can go to schools in Lucknow or Mumbai even if they are posted elsewhere in the state.
The opposite holds true for smaller states. For instance, traditionally and even at present, it is the AGMUT cadre, whose officers choose central deputation in large numbers. This is perhaps why 11 officers from a small cadre like Assam-Meghalaya (AM) are posted in Delhi. AM cadre has a sanctioned pool of 600 AIS officers.
“It is a known fact that officers from the AGMUT cadre and from the North East prefer to come on central deputation since in Delhi, they have access to better schools and social lives for themselves and their families,” said an officer from the cadre posted in Delhi. “It is a sad truth but even today, officers don’t opt for the AGMUT or North Eastern cadres willingly.”
“It is a very unfortunate state of affairs,” H.S. Brahma, a retired IAS officer who belongs to Assam, had told ThePrint. “Basically nobody wants to work in the North East… That is why here, we refer to the bureaucracy as ‘suitcase bureaucracy’.”
“People go to their cadres with one suitcase and then come to Delhi at any given opportunity.”
Patronage factor
However, with a cadre like AM, there is another factor at work, said an officer posted at the Centre—the “patronage factor”.
A.K. Bhalla, who served as the Union home secretary for almost 5 years, before he retired last year, was an officer of the AM cadre. Currently, he is the Governor of Manipur.
Similarly, P.K. Mishra, who is the principal secretary to the PM since 2019, is from the Gujarat cadre, while his home state is Odisha.
This, the officer quoted above, explains the number of Odisha officers posted at the Centre. Incidentally, former RBI governor Shaktikanta Das, who was made the Principal Secretary-2 to the PM in February, also hails from the eastern state. Tuhin Kanta Pandey, who recently retired as finance secretary, and appointed the chairperson of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), also belongs to the Odisha cadre.
“Even the large number of officers from Tamil Nadu, Bihar etc. can be traced back to officers like T.V. Somanathan (cabinet secretary, who belongs to the Tamil Nadu cadre) and Rajiv Gauba (former cabinet secretary, who belonged to the Jharkhand cadre, but had close ties with officers from Bihar from the days of his service in undivided Bihar),” the officer said. “This is a natural patronage system, but it gets enforced in a strong way when officers stay in important positions for many years.”
However, with the government increasingly relying on non-AIS officers like those from the revenue, railway services, etc., these patronage systems are bound to change, the officer added.
Centre-State relations
Finally, the Centre-state relationship is an important factor in determining how many officers from the state come to Delhi.
For several years now, West Bengal, for instance, has sent few officers on central deputation. As of October 2024, only five officers from Bengal were posted in Delhi. This, officers attribute to the frosty relations between the Modi and the Mamata administrations.
“Not only does the state not relieve officers, officers themselves don’t apply for central deputation fearing being picked out,” an IFoS officer said.
This, a retired IAS officer from Uttar Pradesh said, is increasingly the case with UP cadre officers as well. “Whenever there are two distinct power structures at the Centre and the state, officers refrain from going to the Centre.
(Edited by Tony Rai)