Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth has sent out a stern message to Cabinet ministers that they cannot decide amongst themselves the bureaucratic appointments in their ministries without going through the prescribed norms. The Civil Services Board,which the Cabinet Secretary heads,last week turned down Indian Foreign Service officer Sunjay Sudhirs posting to Petroleum Ministry as Joint Secretary (International Cooperation) and thereby annulled a mutual arrangement between External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Petroleum Minister S Jaipal Reddy. As per the prescribed procedure,an officer can be posted as Joint Secretary on a Central Staffing Scheme post only after his name was forwarded in a panel of officers who are thereafter considered for empanelment, the Department of Personnel & Training informed Reddys ministry last Monday. The Board,which posts officers in the ministries,decided on September 24 that the External Affairs Ministry must submit a panel of three officers for the post as laid down in the guidelines approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. It indicated that Sudhirs name cannot be included in the list of the three officers as they could only be IFS officers who are from the 1991 batch or earlier. Sudhir is from the 1993 batch. Sources said that the matter came to a head following Reddys decision to borrow Sudhir from Krishnas ministry even after the DoPT had declined it saying that the 1993 batch officer was not empanelled yet to hold such posts in the Centre. The DoPT agreed to process Petroleum Secretary G C Chaturvedis August 29 request for appointing Sudhir without going through the empanelment route,but said that only officers shortlisted to hold joint secretaries posts in the Centre were considered under the Central Staffing Scheme. However,Reddy short-circuited this process by directly asking Krishna for Sudhir on lien until his regular appointment through CSB. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) agreed to it on September 16 and Reddys ministry subsequently ordered that Sudhir,who was deployed to the ministry on loan basis by the MEA, would be designated as Joint Secretary (MEA) in charge of International Cooperation. Such an arrangement would have opened the floodgates of ministers exchanging bureaucrats amongst themselves on the loan-and-borrow route, said DoPT officials. The incident is the second such scrap between DoPT and Petroleum since Reddy took over. In May 2011,the then DoPT Secretary,Alka Sirohi, objected to the removal of JS (Marketing & Natural Gas) Apurva Chandra saying that the ministrys request lacked reasons for his ouster. However,Reddy had his way then and had Seth remove Chandra without seeking reasons for his ouster.
