MUMBAI: Veteran bureaucrat Sitaram Kunte will be the new chief secretary, Manukumar Srivasatava the new additional chief secretary (home), and metropolitan commissioner R A Rajeev, whose retirement is due by the end of the month, may get a three-month extension. It is learnt that an MVA minister has opposed Rajeev’s extension and now chief minister Uddhav Thackeray will take a decision on the matter.
Kunte will take over the reins of the state bureaucracy on Monday, the first day of the budget session of the legislature. He will retire on November 30.
Besides Kunte, former municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi was in the zone of consideration for the chief secretary’s post. While Pardeshi and Kunte belong to the same batch, of 1985, the former is senior to the latter.
After his unceremonious exit from the BMC over the handling of the Covid-19 situation, Pardeshi was appointed to the urban development department. Pardeshi did not join his new posting but immediately took up an assignment with the UN, which irked a prominent person in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) led by Uddhav Thackeray. If a bureaucrat is to be believed, on that very day the MVA leadership decided to appoint Kunte the new chief secretary.
Kunte, currently the additional chief secretary (home), replaces Sanjay Kumar, who will retire on February 28.
The low-profile and soft-spoken Kunte was collector of Dhule from 1993 to 1995 and later, for a brief period, of Beed. In his bureaucratic career spanning more than three and a half decades, Kunte held several key assignments. He was in the BMC for a long period in different capacities. He was deputy municipal commissioner for a year in 2001, additional municipal commissioner from 2001 to 2005, and finally municipal commissioner from 2012 to 2015.
He was replaced by Ajoy Mehta, who was senior to Kunte.
A product of the Delhi School of Economics, Kunte was secretary to governor S M Krishna from 2006 to 2008. Besides occupying the post of Mhada managing director, Kunte was housing secretary for two years, from 2008 to 2010.
Kunte was instrumental in preparing the draft document for the Maharashtra Housing Regulatory Act. Kunte also worked in the departments of forest, finance and environment and services.