Government Empanels 28 IAS Officers For Consideration Of Central Posting As Additional Secretary

The order in this regard has been issued by the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT), which said that the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) gave its nod to empanel IAS officers the AS and the AS (Equivalent) for the purpose of their appointments at the Central Ministries and Departments.

Though the officers, chosen for empanelment, belong to batches from 1993 to 2001, the maximum of 21 IAS officers are from 2001-batch, as 16 of them have been given Additional Secretary rank and four are given Additional Secretary (Equivalent) rank.      

According to the list, issued by the DoPT, the names of officers, who are recommended for Additional Secretary, include 1996-batch officer Dheeraj Sahu of Uttar Pradesh cadre and 2000-batch IAS officer Debasish Prusty of Rajasthan cadre.

Among the officers belonging to 2001-batch include Lokhande Prashant Sitaram (AGMUT), Mandeep K. Bhandari (AGMUT) Sridhar Chiruvolu (Bihar), Arti Kanwar (Gujarat), Vijay Nehra (Gujarat), R Selvam (Himachal Pradesh), Pankaj Yadav (Haryana), Darpan Jain (Karnataka), Nipun Vinayak (Maharashtra), Prajakta L Verma (Maharashtra), Shrikar Keshav Pardeshi (Maharashtra), Vijayalakshmi Prasanna Bidari (Maharashtra), Nidhi Mani Tripathi (Manipur), Dodda Venkata Swamy (Odisha), Priyank Bharti (Punjab) and Neetu Kumari Prasad (Telangana).

There are 10 IAS officers, who have been recommended for the ‘AS Equivalent’ rank, and they include 1993-batch Anoop Kumar Agrawal of West Bengal cadre and three officers belonging to 1999-batch are Sarita Chauhan Chand (AGMUT), Bhaskar Jyoti Sharma (Odisha) and Shubha Sarma (Odisha). Punjab cadre IAS officer of 2000-batch Kumar Rahul and his batchmate from Uttar Pradesh cadre Sorabh Babu have also been empanelled to hold the post AS Equivalent at the Centre.

Four officers belonging to 2001-batch, who have been recommended for empanelment to hold the post AS Equivalent at the Centre are Ankita Mishra Bundela (AGMUT) Jujjavarapu Balaji (Assam-Meghalaya), Siddharth Jain (Andhra Pradesh) and Santhanagopalan R (Odisha).

With the empanelment of these officers, the ACC clears the deck for them to be considered for appointment to senior positions in the Government of India at their respective specified level. But, in the order, the DoPT has made it clear that empanelment does not automatically guarantee a posting at the Centre, as it only paves the way for officers to be eligible for central deputation at the specified ranks.