Thiruvananthapuram: Five senior Kerala cadre IAS officers have been cleared by the Centre to the rank of secretary or secretary equivalent, who are now eligible to be appointed in such posts at the Centre.
The appointments committee of the cabinet have approved the empanelment of Gyanesh Kumar, Manoj Joshi and Rajesh Kumar Singh for holding secretary-level posts, and Devendra Kumar Singh and Edwin Kulbhushan Majhi for holding secretary-equivalent posts.
While Rajesh Kumar Singh is presently additional chief secretary (finance) in the state, other four officers are on deputation at the Centre. It is reliably learnt that Rajesh Kumar Singh, who has completed his cooling-off period in the state, would leave for Centre soon.
Gyanesh Kumar, an officer from the 1988 batch, is presently additional secretary in the ministry of home affairs and had supervised the scrapping of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir.
While Manoj Joshi is additional secretary in the ministry of food processing, Devendra Kumar Singh is additional secretary and development commissioner in the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises and E K Majhi is additional secretary in the ministry of food and public distribution.
The officers are among the 40 senior IAS officers from across the country who have been elevated for holding the posts of secretaries or equivalent at the Centre.
The state at present has 19 officers who are on central deputation, and two — Ajit Patil and Keshavendra Kumar — on inter-cadre deputation to Maharashtra and Bihar, respectively, while one officer — M Sivasankar — is under suspension.
The state also is facing acute shortage of the IAS officers, as seen from the statistics. While the total strength of IAS officers sanctioned by the Centre for Kerala is 231, only 181 officers are expected to serve the state at a time, while the remaining are excluded under the central deputation reserve, leave reserve, etc.
On the contrary to the expected strength, the state has only 145 officers available for service, out of which only 124 are serving in the cadre at present.