Major reshuffle by Centre, 35 senior officers shifted

A large scale bureaucratic reshuffle was carried out last night involving 35 senior civil servants including Anant Kumar Singh, an Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry who has been shifted to Petroleum Ministry.

The reshuffle was aimed at filling vacancies of Additional and Joint Secretaries in the government that had arisen due to retirements and nearly 60 officers seeking voluntary repatriation to their parent cadres since May last year.

The rejig carried out by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw shifting of another Deputy Election Commissioner Sudhir Tripathi, an IAS officer of 1985 batch Jharkhand cadre, as Director General, National Institute of Fashion Technology.

Earlier last week, Vinod Zutshi was promoted as Secretary Tourism. With this, there is only one Deputy Election Commissioner, Umesh Sinha, working in the Commission. This is at a time when the poll body is expected to soon announce Assembly election schedule for Bihar.

In a surprise move, Additional Secretary Anant Kumar Singh, an IAS officer of 1984 batch from Uttar Pradesh cadre, in the Home Ministry was shifted to Petroleum Ministry as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor, only eight months after he had come on a central deputation.

Singh, considered to be a close confidant of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, is understood to have had a continuous battle with former Home Secretary L C Goyal who was unceremoniously removed yesterday morning and shifted to lesser important post of Director General ITPO. Singh was looking after Centre-State relations.