IAS officers desert state for greener pastures in Centre

While the general administration department of the state government requires 248 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre officers to head various departments, there are only 177 IAS officials serving in Gujarat leaving a large number of positions unmanned or occupied by officials who have full-time jobs in other areas.

The divestment of the state public sector undertakings (PSUs) is likely to reduce the posts of IAS officers and may bring some relief to the overburdened officers serving the state government.

At present, the situation is so bad in the state that Indian Forest Service (IFS) officials are being inducted into the core areas of administration. One such example is Rajbir Singh, an IFS officer, who holds the post of joint managing director of TCGL.

When asked about if the IAS officers deserting the state for lucrative posts in the Central government, one of the senior IAS official at the General Administrative Department of the state government, said, "The IAS officials at the state and Central level have almost the same pay scale. There is no such reason that the IAS officials are deserting the state government for lucrative posts at the Central government. However, at any given point, some of the officials are on leave, some are sick and the like. Moreover, the posts of IAS officers may be reduced due to the divestment of the state PSUs."

Out of the 218 officers, 34 officers are on deputation to Central government, while one is on deputation to the World Bank, one on state to state deputation, one on foreign service, one on UNIDO assignment, and three on long term training abroad, leaving the state government with total of 177 officials, 120 cadre IAS officials and 57 ex-cadre IAS officials to serve the post of 248 IAS officials of the state, forcing the 177 left out IAS officers in the state to take additional burden of 71 charges.

"It is on the sole discretion of the official, who may leave the job for any lucrative private sector job by giving notice to the government.

"At any given point of time around 35 IAS officials are on deputation to the Central government," said the official.

Some of the crucial posts without a full-time IAS official include the heads of some companies such as the Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd, Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers Company Ltd and Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority.