Gurugram: Two Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers of the 1990 batch, Sudhir Rajpal and Sumita Misra, have been in limbo since the appointment of their batchmate Anurag Rastogi as the chief secretary by the Haryana government last week, which has made the seniority issue in the state more difficult to resolve.
Rastogi’s appointment is in supersession of the two officers, who are placed above him in the Haryana IAS Officers Gradation list.
Rastogi was one of three 1990-batch officers—the other two being Ankur Gupta (now retired) and Raja Sekhar Vundru—who had last year given a representation to the state seeking revision of the seniority list by placing them ahead of Rajpal and Misra, who had had been transferred to Haryana from other states. Rastogi, Gupta and Vundru are from the Haryana IAS cadre itself.
The three officers had written to then chief secretary T.V.S.N. Prasad, arguing that Rajpal and Misra had been transferred to Haryana via their request, as is allowed under Rule 6(3) of the Indian Administrative Service (Regulation of Seniority) Rules, 1987.
Prasad had referred the matter to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which took the view that the case should be decided by the chief secretary. Prasad did not take any decision in the matter until his retirement on 31 October.
Now, Rastogi is the Haryana Chief Secretary and is virtually the judge in his own case.
“The seniority dispute remains pending as Rastogi won’t be able to resolve this issue,” a source in his office told ThePrint. “Nemo judex in causa sua (no one should be a judge in one’s own cause) is the very first of the various principles of natural justice. Hence, Rastogi will recuse himself even if the state government decided to take a call on this issue during his tenure as chief secretary.”
A senior IAS officer in Haryana told ThePrint that the state government had also deviated from tradition by not providing the posting of Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue and Disaster Management), also called FCR (Financial Commissioner, Revenue), to any officer.
“In Haryana, it has been a tradition, barring a few exceptions, that while the senior-most officer is appointed chief secretary, the officer second in seniority is named the FCR. When Vivek Joshi was the chief secretary, the post of FCR was given to Rastogi. But now, when Rastogi took over the post on 20 February, the charge of FCR hasn’t been given to any officer,” he said.
The officer explained that in the absence of a regular FCR, the post was currently being looked after by the ACS (home department), also known as the home secretary, who is the first link officer for FCR. Misra is the incumbent home secretary.
ThePrint reached out to Rajesh Khullar, Chief Principal Secretary in the Haryana Chief Minister’s Office, for a comment via call and text message, but no response was received.
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Stand of officers involved
In their representation to the state, Rastogi and the others had argued that officers transferred to Haryana from another cadre at their request should be placed below all officers of the same IAS batch originally allotted the Haryana cadre.
The three officers also referred to a gazette notification, dated 30 December, 1991, regarding the cadre allocation of their batch in support of their claim. The officers said that in that notification, Gupta, Rastogi, Anand Mohan Sharan and Vundru had been placed above Misra in the Haryana cadre, while Rajpal was in the Himachal Pradesh cadre.
They also mentioned the case of IAS officer Alka Tiwari of their batch, who, in the same gazette notification, was placed below all other officers of the Maharashtra cadre despite getting a higher rank because of a change of cadre at her request.
Post the representation made by the three IAS officers, Prasad, the previous chief secretary, had given the officers involved a personal hearing on the issue.
According to sources in the state government, in his response at the hearing, Rajpal cited a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order of 16 December, 1993, which had noted that he was to be allotted the Haryana cadre and that he had applied for the same within the stipulated time.
He argued that his cadre allocation was in compliance with this judgment and was not a voluntary transfer, so it was not done under Rule 6(3) of the IAS Rules, 1987.
Misra, on the other hand, contended that she was allocated the Haryana cadre in the beginning. She pointed out that her name was included in the Provisional Cadre Allocation Order of November 1990 under Haryana, which was later confirmed in the Final Cadre Allocation Order of December 1991. She maintained that there was no cadre change or transfer in her case at her request, the sources said.
After Prasad’s retirement, Vivek Joshi, who as DoPT secretary had returned the representation of the three officers to the chief secretary for a decision, was himself appointed to the position from November 2024 and remained in the position till this month. But he also left the issue unresolved.
The state’s prolonged indecision has fuelled speculation about the government’s reluctance to take a definitive stance on the matter, keeping in mind the potential administrative implications.
Officers within the bureaucracy are closely watching how the row plays out.
A retired IAS officer told ThePrint that the government, in any case, has to resolve the seniority row of the 1990 batch because while Rastogi is to retire on 30 June this year, the issue will remain relevant for Vundru, Rajpal and Misra for a longer period as they have to retire in July 2026, November 2026 and January 2027, respectively.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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