With the Odisha Government facing the worst-ever shortage of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, a decision has been taken by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to recall at least four officers from the Centre.
The Department of General Administration (DoGA) has written to the Government of India’s Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) to send back Asit Tripathy, laxmi Narayan Gupta, Sanjeev Chopra and Ranjana Chopra to the State, said sources.
Tripathy is now a Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Gupta is Secretary, Oil Industry Development Board. Sanjeev Chopra and Ranjana Chopra are the Joint Directors in the lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.
The four officers have been serving in the Union Government for over five years. The paucity of IAS officers is really acute in Odisha, which has an authorised strength of 226 IAS officers, 158 direct recruits and 68 promotees. But there are only 129 direct recruits allocated to the State and 40 given promotion.
Out of the 129 direct recruits, a mere 89 are available for posting as 36 officers have left for Central postings and four have gone to their respective States on inter-cadre deputation. Never before had such a large number of IAS officers gone on Central deputation. So, the State Government is now forced to allow one officer to handle several assignments. And four more IAS officers have applied for Central deputation and are waiting for clearance of the State Government, which will further worsen the situation.
Now, besides writing to the Centre for recalling four officers, the State Government has also allowed filling up 12 posts of IAS officers meant for promotion from the senior officers of the Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) cadre. This would ease the situation to some extent, said an officer.