HYDERABAD: The central government on Wednesday admitted before the Hyderabad bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal that senior IAS officer Satish Chandra was allowed to move from Telangana cadre to AP cadre through swapping in contravention of the guidelines framed by the Pratyush Sinha Committee.
The bench, comprising B Venkateswara Rao (member-judicial) and Ranjana Chowdary (member-admn) was hearing a batch of petitions filed by IAS officers Somesh Kumar and others who were challenging the guidelines prepared by the committee for dividing All India Service officials between Telangana and AP states.
Assistant solicitor-general B Narayana Reddy, while presenting the case of the Centre, said other officers should not ask for a repeat of such mistakes while seeking cadre of their choice. Illegality cannot be perpetuated. In respect of AP and Telangana cadre division the authorities have evolved a procedure and divided 294 officials and the number of officials who questioned it is not more than 15. This shows that the whole exercise was done in a fair manner, he claimed.
Senior counsel DV Sitarama Murthy, appearing for Somesh Kumar, argued ealier that the committee’s guidelines were impractical and the authorities themselves were finding it difficult to implement them.
Citing various judgments, the ASG replied that All India Service officials did not have a legal right to serve in a particular place. He made cited the judgment of Jharkhand bench of Bihar High Court that dismissed en masse the petitions of about 60 IAS officials who challenged their cadre division between Bihar and Jharkhand in 2003. The Jharkhand bench told the applicants to see the whole picture where 900 officials were divided between the two states after bifurcation of Bihar state, he added. The bench posted the matter to Thursday for further hearing.