In a bureaucratic reshuffle, the Centre has appointed Gargi Kaul, a 1984-batch officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA&AS), as Secretary, Defence Finance.

In an order issued on Tuesday, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet appointed Sumeet Jerath, earlier Special Secretary and Financial Advisor in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), as Special Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat.

In the MEA, Jerath was replaced by Raj Kumar Goyal, a 1990-batch IAS officer of Jammu and Kashmir cadre, who was appointed as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor.

The government also appointed Prem Kumar Kataria as Additional Secretary in the Textiles Ministry, Anil Kumar Jha as Additional Secretary in the Revenue Department and S.K.G. Rahate as Additional Secretary in the Power Ministry.

The order said that IAS officer Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi, Member (Admin), National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), will be Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor in the Culture Ministry; and Amitabh Kumar, Additional Director General (Shipping), has been promoted as Director General (Shipping) in the Shipping Ministry.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet also approved promotions of various officers working at the level of Joint Secretary to Additional Secretary and above.

In a separate order, the government also approved empanelment of several IAS officers of the 1989 batch for holding Additional Secretary and equivalent level posts. These included Atal Dulloo (J&K cadre), V. Srinivas (Rajasthan cadre), Prashant Trivedi (Uttar Pradesh cadre) and Monika Sehgal Garg (Uttar Pradesh cadre), among others.

Reacting to the appointments, Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said transfers and postings can take place only in "rarest of rare cases" when the Model Code of Conduct is in place and asked if the government had taken the permission of the Election Commission.

He said if the requisite permission had not been taken, the Election Commission should take suo moto cognisance of the government's action.

--IANS

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