NEW DELHI: Four powerful Secretaries of the Central government are playing the role of mentor to newly inducted IAS officers of the 2013 batch. Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Jugal Mohapatra, Secretary Rural Development, Sanjay Kothari, Secretary, Personnel, and Anjuli Chhib Duggal are holding meetings with fresh bureaucrats, who have been posted as Assistant Secretaries to the Centre.
At the direction of Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha, ministries have allocated flagship programmes or policy desks to Assistant Secretaries. These two desks in any ministry are considered important as they have a bearing on the states, in terms of project implementation. The Cabinet Secretary, during a meeting in August, had mentioned that the move “would give the officer an opportunity to look at the same policy project both from the Centre as well as the field point of view”.
The Assistant Secretaries posted with the Centre are being groomed by encouraging them to participate in all meetings of the department as well as to accompany senior officers for meetings in the Cabinet Secretariat. The new bureaucrats have been asked to identify one or two process in the department concerned for simplification and also compile norms pertaining to their desks.
“Attempts may be made to identify common issues, shortcomings of each clusters, which may be brought before Cabinet Secretary, if decisions are required at a higher level,” the meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary told the mentors.
Kant, spearheading the Make in India initiative, is the nodal mentor for the infrastructure cluster. Besides, three other senior secretaries — Madhusudan Prasad (Urban Development), Anil Swarup (Coal), and Rakesh Garg (Telecom) — will also be mentors.
Rural Development Secretary Jugal Mohapatra is the nodal mentor for social sector programmes, while Department of Financial Services Secretary Anjuly Chhib Duggal will deal with economic cluster.