HYDERABAD: The State government's decision to appoint IPS officer CV Anand (1991 batch) as the commissioner of Consumer Affairs, Food & Civil Supplies department has not gone down well with IAS officers.
Taken aback by the State's move to allocate a post normally held by IAS officers to an IPS officer, IAS officers in the State are contemplating to register their protest with the chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, soon.
As there are reports that the government is also planning to appoint another IPS officer as transport commissioner, IAS Officers' Association leaders have decided to seek appointment with the chief minister to urge him not to appoint IPS officers in posts, which are generally taken up by the IAS officers.
"The post might have been given to Anand following his key role in unearthing a major scam in the civil supplies department, by the Special Operation Team. But, appointing IPS officers in the posts held by IAS officers would not set a good precedent. Hence, the government should restrain from such practice," an IAS officer said.
"Appointing an IPS officer in such a key post undermines the significance of IAS officers. All those IAS officers, who look after civil supplies department activities in various districts, normally, have to report to commissioner of civil supplies. How can the IAS officers now report to an IPS officer? Can't it be considered as degrading the importance of IAS officers?," the officer fumed.
The issue was taken up by some IAS officers with chief secretary Rajiv Sharma at the Secretariat here on Wednesday.
In fact, when Anand was holding the post of Cyberabad police commissioner, an investigation team headed by him uncovered a major scam that had taken place in the civil supplies department wherein some employees had colluded with traders to divert huge quantity of subsidised rice allotted to the public distribution system to open market.
The team had at that time found that 600 metric tonnes of subsidised rice from the state was stolen every month and was sold in open market, causing a loss of more than `100 crore every year to the exchequer.The argument within the official circles is that chief minister KCR preferred to appoint Anand in the post of commissioner of Consumer Affairs, Food & Civil Supplies to contain prevailing corruption in the PDS.