Frenetic buzz in Capital over Babu appointments

There is litte doubt that retired IAS officer from Gujarat K Kailashanathan will accompany Modi to PMO if the latter becomes PM

Naved Masood, IAS officer of the 1977 cadre and current Secretary Ministry of Corporate Affairs or Javed Usmani, current Chief Secretary Uttar Pradesh could become the next Cabinet Secretary after current incumbent Ajit K Seth retires in June.

Although a new Prime Minister is yet to sworn in, airtime in the capital was clogged with excited chatter about whom the new government could favour. Masood is from the Manipur-Tripura cadre. Usmani has not been rubbing along well with the UP Chief Minister and will grasp at any possibility of coming to the centre.

Old-timers recalled with nostalgia that the last time the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power in 1998, too it had to appoint a new Cabinet Secretary in a matter of days. At that time, Prabhat Kumar replaced TSR Subramaniam, then on an extension.

If the seniority principle is applied, current secretary heavy industries department, Sutanu Behuria should be next cabinet secretary. Behuria, originally hailing from Odisha, retires on July 31, 2014. According to rules, the officer needs to be below 60 years of age at the time of appointment, and once appointed as cabinet secretary, gets a fixed two-year term. The only other 1976 batch IAS still in service is Bihar chief secretary Alok K Sinha.

But there is hardly any doubt that retired IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre and Narendra Modi’s right hand man K Kailashanathan will accompany Modi to the PMO should the latter become Prime Minister. Kailashanathan is three batches junior to Behuria and that appointment could create an anomaly as the PM’s Principal Secretary will be several batches junior to the Cabinet Secretary. This is why there is speculation that several batches may be superseded – so that parity is maintained between the two most important bureaucrats in the government. However, there is no hard and fast rule about this. Shashank Shekhar Singh was Mayawati’s Principal Secretary in UP and it was to him that most people went when they had a problem, and not the Chief Secretary of UP.

A number of other bureaucrats are retiring along with exit of the UPA government. Telecom secretary MF Farooqi retires in July and urban development (UD) secretary Sudhir Krishna’s stint is also expected to be completed by July-end. The list of those for the top job includes Sangita Gairola (ex-servicemen), Vishwapati Trivedi (shipping) and Pradeep Kumar Sinha (power). But they haven’t served in their cadres state government recently.

The names doing the rounds for the post of National Security Advisor include former foreign secretaries Kanwal Sibal former representative to the UN Hardeep Puri, and former chief of external spy agency Sanjeev Tripathi. Former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval’s name is being discussed as well.