JOIN USTamil Nadu-cadre IAS officer seeks VRS; likely to join Karnataka Congress
Seasoned Tamil Nadu-cadre bureaucrat Shambhu Kallolikar, currently serving as Additional Chief Secretary in the Social Welfare Department, has sought voluntary retirement from service and is likely to contest the 2023 Assembly elections in his home state of Karnataka.
The 1991-cadre IAS officer, who has worked in various capacities in the Union and state governments, is in talks with the Congress. He is likely to be fielded from his native district of Belagavi, sources told DH.
A source in the state government said Kallolikar has submitted an application seeking VRS which is being considered. However, efforts to reach the senior bureaucrat, who hails from Raybag in Belagavi district, didn’t fructify.
Sources said Kallolikar has been in touch with Congress leaders in Karnataka for the past few months and will in all probability join the party after he is relieved from civil service. “He is in touch with our leaders and he wants to test the electoral waters from Belagavi. We are talking to him and he will be joining our party soon,” a Congress leader told DH.
Another leader in the know also confirmed the development, saying Kallolikar will take the political plunge very soon. Karnataka will go to assembly elections in May 2023.
Currently the ACS in Social Welfare Department, Kallolikar is the third IAS officer of the TN cadre to quit service to take the political plunge in the past two years.
Santhosh Babu, who sought VRS in 2020 and joined Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) but lost the 2021 assembly polls from Velachery in Chennai, and while Jagmohan Singh Raju sought VRS early this year to be nominated as BJP candidate from Amritsar East Assembly constituency.
Kallolikar, who began his civil service career in West Bengal, worked as district collector of Pudukkottai and Thiruvarur besides serving as the Commissioner, Fisheries Department, and Project Director, Tamil Nadu Aids Control Society.
The bureaucrat has also headed several PSUs of the state government and served as joint secretary with the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. In 2014, he was repatriated to Tamil Nadu cadre. Kallolikar, who studied at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, is also an author.
Two Karnataka cadre officers – Sasikanth Senthil and K Annamalai – resigned and took VRS respectively in 2019 and are now politicians in Tamil Nadu. While Senthil (IAS) is with the Congress, Annamalai (IPS) is the state president of the BJP.