Only one Secy handles Revenue, Expenditure & Budget in the dept!
Jaipur: A new history has been created in the Finance department as it is for the first time that the responsibilities of all three Secretaries - Revenue, Expenditure and Budget - are on the shoulders of one IAS - 2006 batch officer Naresh Kumar Thakral.
Since Secretary (Revenue) KK Pathak has left for election-related duty, the additional charge of his post has been given to Thakral by DoP whereas he already has the charge of Secretary (Budget).
Thakral was posted as Secretary (Expenditure) in January 2022, but when in August 2023 Secretary (Budget) -Rohit Gupta - left for study leave, the additional charge of this post was given to Thakral and for the past eight months, Thakral has been working on two posts. And now on April 23, DoP has handed him a third responsibility.
Administrative experts reveal that under an ACS or Principal Secretary in the Finance department, three Secretaries handle three separate departments.
The work related to all three posts is extremely important and is considered a full-time job, especially the work of the Secretary (Revenue) who has to look after the departments like Commercial Taxes, Excise, Stamps and Registration and Audit & Accounts. Hence, only in exceptional situations has the additional charge been handed of this post to some other IAS.
But this time, the DoP has created a new history, although administrative experts have termed it impractical and illogical. It is worth noting that Pathak will return after 25 days and till that time Thakral will have to handle the gargantuan load of three major posts whereas just two months later in July, Thakral is set to retire.
It is also worth noting that senior IAS of the 2000 batch - Debashish Prusty - has returned after a four-year-long foreign stint and has been on APO for the past twelve days.
He left in October 2019 for the Indian Embassy in Brussels where he served as Deputy Chief of Mission.
Before this, he served as private secretary to MoS (Expenditure & Financial Services) in the Union Finance Ministry from August 2009 to May 2014.
This means that he has proper experience in finance-related matters and the department itself. Thus word in the bureaucratic circle is that he could have been given the responsibility in the Finance department or DoP.
