Only four officers from Kashmir are administrative secretaries

With Jammu & Kashmir coming under the AGMUT cadre after its reorganisation as a union territory (UT), only four Kashmiri officers are administrative secretaries in the current bureaucratic set-up of the UT.

Of the four, who arepresently administrative heads of government departments, two are Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers while the remaining two are from Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS).

Sources in the Civil Secretariat said that halt on induction from KAS to IAS and retirement of local officers in the past five years is responsible for diminishing representation of local officers in top bureaucracy.

“There has been no induction of local officers in IAS for the last several years. More than 20 local officers, who were holding key positions, have attained superannuation in these years,” they said.

At present several non-local IAS officers are holding additional charge of one or more departments.

According to the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019, while the existing IAS, IPS and IFS officers of the J&K cadre would continue in the same cadre, fresh UPSC recruits would be assigned the Assam-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territory (AGMUT).

The Centre has also decided to lower the quota from existing 50% to 33% for local officers from state services to IAS, IPS and IFS in J&K. Earlier norms allowed the erstwhile state to enjoy 50:50 formula for the three all India services - IAS, IPS and IFS.

Under the earlier arrangement, 50% of the total posts in these services were to be manned by those selected through direct recruitment mode, on the basis of civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), and the rest 50% posts were to be filled through the promotion of native officers belonging to State services to IAS, IPS and the IFoS.

A senior local IAS officer said the new rules could pose challenges for governance in J&K. “KAS officers who are promoted to the IAS have a nuanced understanding of governance. Kashmir is a place where local residents are more likely to pose their faith in local officers as opposed to officers who come from the outside,” he added.