Senior IAS officer and Principal Secretary (Finance) S N Sahai will continue with the Delhi Government for now as the Centre has cancelled his appointment as Additional Secretary in the Union Commerce Ministry.
Sahai is currently working as Principal Secretary (Finance and Home) in the Delhi Government. Also, he is holding an additional charge of Chief Secretary K K Sharma who is on leave till October 18. Sahai was supposed to be relieved by October 18. He was appointed as the Additional Secretary in the Commerce Ministry by the DoPT in September.
Top sources said the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) has cancelled the appointment of Sahai as Additional Secretary in the Union Government. An order to this effect was issued without citing any reasons by the Department of Personnel and Training.
Considered close to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, the 1986 batch IAS officer of the UT cadre was first transferred to Goa as Chief Secretary in March this year. later, the order was revised and he was posted in the Commerce Ministry.
The Delhi Government has been facing shortage of IAS and DANICS level officers. At present there are only a handful of officers in the rank of the Principal Secretary in the city administration.
Transfer and posting of officers has been a bone of contention between the city Government and the Centre.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has time and again been alleging that his Government was not being provided with the officers of its choice to serve the city even as most of the AGMUT cadre bureaucrats are said to be reluctant to work in Delhi due to trust deficit between the elected Government and bureaucracy.
Recently, the Centre had also declined to post Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi as Officer on Special Duty on the ground of service rules. Kejriwal has been repeatedly seeking Chaturvedi's appointment in his personal staff and had also requested the Prime Minister in this regard.
The ongoing tussle between Raj Niwas and the Delhi Government is one of the reasons that bureaucrats are avoiding to work with the city administration.