Back in October, some senior AIS officers in Telangana got a not-so-pleasant surprise — the DoPT rejected their request to stay in the state and asked them to shift to the Andhra Pradesh cadre. The IAS babus were relieved in no time, but the IPS officers weren’t going anywhere. Turns out, a few of their colleagues had their eyes on juicy promotions and needed certain cadre posts to be vacated first. Word on the grapevine is that these IPS officers pulled every string in Delhi to make sure that their colleagues allocated to AP were finally sent there. Now that they have been relieved, the promotion path looks nice and clear.
Bureaucratic bottleneck as babus get cautious
A key IAS officer in the CMO recently passed down a word of caution—don’t blindly sign proposals from non-IAS or conferred IAS officers or follow oral orders of ministers. The warning, it seems, struck a nerve. With past cases of top IAS officers still fresh in memory, district collectors are treading carefully, worried about any fallout. The result? A bureaucratic bottleneck. Reports suggest that over 180 files have piled up at the collector offices around Hyderabad, with ministers struggling to get things moving. With collectors reluctant to clear files, pressure is mounting, but for now, the fear of scrutiny is keeping many hands from signing.