LUCKNOW, DEC 7: Uttar Pradesh is perhaps the only state in the country where nearly 4,500 IAS and IPS officers have been transferred in eight years. This, at a time when the state is facing a perpetual fiscal crunch and each transfer costs the state exchequer between Rs 10,000 to 15,000.The new CM, Ram Prakash Gupta, who believes that the economy of the state is not that bad, has also contributed to the long list of transfers by shifting nearly 100 bureaucrats even as he is yet to complete one month in the new chair. Gupta transferred 24 IAS and 26 IPS officers on Monday and is likely to go for another major reshuffle soon because he wants to get rid of ``Kalyan's men'' from the bureaucracy. ``Each new CM effects changes because everybody needs his own team to work better,'' Gupta told The Indian Express recently, oblivious of the fact that Uttar Pradesh had seen 13 CMs and a number of tenures of President's Rule since 1977. On an average, each CM shifts nearly 500 officers, regardless of the number ofdays he or she remains in the post. Mayawati, during her two tenures lasting five and six months respectively from June 3, 1995 to October 17, 1995 and from March 21, 1997 to September 21, 1997 shifted more than 950 bureaucrats.The high mobility of officers owing to frequent change of chief ministers has led to a situation where no officer, barring distant exceptions, has been able to remain in any district for more than 18 months since 1991, when Kalyan Singh assumed the reins of the state in his first stint as the CM. In his tenure from July 1991 to December 6, 1992, Kalyan shifted 293 IAS and 228 IPS officers.A research paper on the `Effect of Transfer and Promotion on Employee's Morale', submitted to the Lucknow University by Dr Vaishali Saxena, says the percentage of IAS officers in UP who have remained in a particular district is 47.6, those who have remained for a year 17.6 and more than a year but not exceeding 18 months 35.4 per cent.
