At last Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cleared the Pratyush Sinha guidelines for distribution of All India Service officers between the two States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
The Prime Minister’s Office directed the Department of Personnel and Training to be transparent to the extent possible in the distribution of AIS officers between the two States.
The Pratyush Sinha committee will meet in Delhi on July 14 and formally announce the process of allotment. It is expected to be completed in about a month ending the uncertainty in administration in both the States. At present only 44 IAS officers were ordered to serve in Telangana Secretariat and the rest are continuing in Andhra Pradesh. Of 376 total IAS posts in the united AP, only 294 IAS are serving and the rest of posts are vacant.
The Committee appointed by the then UPA Government submitted the guidelines for the approval of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before May 16 but he could not clear them.
After Narendra Modi assumed the charge, the file for allocation of AIS officers (IAS, IPS and IFS officers) was sent to him within 48 hours. But as there was no precedent of giving options for the AIS officers in the earlier instances, Mr. Modi sought an explanation, sources said.
Though some AIS officers represented to the committee seeking option, several others had different views. Some of them felt as senior bureaucrats they should not be choosing a particular State as a matter of principle.
Moreover, there was an imbalance as majority of direct recruits belonged to AP, more number of promotee AIS officers belonged to Telangana. In some cases AIS officer couples in the same cadre wanted to be considered on their individual merit rather than as an officer tagged to the spouse and posted to the same State. About 20 to 23 AIS couples gave such representation, sources said.
But the underlying concern of AIS officers was that there should be no scope for any manipulation in the allotment and wanted fool-proof guidelines including lottery system to allot the first set of officers to a State as per the roster. If the first set of officers in the chosen numbers is allotted to Andhra, the next set of officers would go to Telangana and vice versa, sources added.
