Will more Raj IAS get a Central deputation call now?

Jaipur: The Union govt has made seventeen new appointments on Joint Secy level wherein IAS officers from 1997-2007 batch and other officers from All India Services have been included. But what is worrying and disheartening is the fact that order of Central DoPT, issued after a long time while the MCC is enforced, does not feature any IAS from Rajasthan. The reason for this is that there is no IAS of Joint Secy rank in pipeline in the state. Notably, although in the previous Gehlot govt, many senior IAS went for deputation, but junior and young officers did not express interest for deputation and those who did ask for a NOC from the state government were not given and even if someone was given the NOC, they did not get a call from Delhi.

According to sources, ten young IAS of 2007 are empanelled as of today for Joint Secy but majority of these are not interested in going to Delhi. The DoP took too much time in giving NOC to Subir Kumar (1998 batch). In fact, Subir’s NOC was renewed too but he did not get a call from Delhi and now he is not interested in going on deputation to Centre.

T. Ravikanth (1998 batch) had sought a NOC in the previous govt and after a delay, he withdrew the request. 2002 batch IAS Ashutosh AT Pednekar was somehow given the NOC by the previous govt in October 2023, but he did not get a call from the centre and now in march 2024, the validity of the NOC expired. Now he will have to seek NOC yet again from new govt.

Any young IAS, who is empanelled for JS as on today, should go on deputation to Delhi and officers who seek a NOC, the DOP should provide NOC to such officers without delay because it is extremely important to increase our participation in the decreasing number of Rajasthan cadre officers at the centre. As of now only four young Rajasthan cadre officers - Mugdha Singh, Pritam B Yashwant, Sidharth Mahajan and Tina Soni - are serving as Joint Secretary while two officers - Mukta Nand Agrawal and Abhimanyu Kumar - are serving as Director. Considering the IAS cadre strength of 253 in Rajasthan, this number on deputation is extremely low.