Either the State of Goa is not important enough or the post of the Chief Secretary of the State is of little importance. It’s been much over a year since the State administration has been headed by an Acting Chief Secretary, and there is still no sign of a full-fledged CS taking charge anytime soon. After Kewal Kumar Sharma was handpicked by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for the Chief Secretary’s post in the National Capital Territory in March last year, R K Srivastav was appointed as acting Chief Secretary and continues in that position. Last week he was even given a three-month extension in ‘public interest’, whatever that may mean. So, in effect, the State will not get a full-fledged Chief Secretary, one who meets all the requirements for the post, until September 30 of this year, which will make it 19 months at a stretch with an acting Chief Secretary.
And yet, the period that Goa has been without a full-fledged Chief Secretary, is actually much longer. Sharma had headed the bureaucracy in Goa for just two months before he was transferred to Delhi. He had arrived in January 2015 and was relieved in March the same year. He had been transferred to Goa after former Chief Secretary B Vijayan had retired in September 2014, and so there had been a three-month interlude between Vijayan’s exit and Sharma’s entry, a period during which the State administration had again been functioning headed by an acting Chief Secretary. When the Centre could act so speedily and transfer Sharma back to Delhi at the request of the Chief Minister of the National Capital Territory, what stops it from transferring a bureaucrat to Goa as Chief Secretary?
This definitely calls for relooking at the issue of Goa being clubbed with smaller states and union territories in the AGMUT cadre that has Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories, and from which pool the IAS, IPS and IFS officers are selected and posted in the State. Over the past few years the choice of bureaucrats being transferred to Goa from this pool of officers has led to a few tussles, with the State even rejecting some of the Central choices. This in fact has been a grouse of long standing as government through the years have had to accept the choice of the Centre – the Ministry of Home Affairs – under which this cadre functions. To put an end to all these clashes, former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had not only proposed but even initiated the process of having a separate cadre of the All India Services for Goa. He had sent a format request to the Centre seeking a separate cadre for Goa. Once Parrikar went to Delhi as Union Defence Minister, the moves for a separate cadre died down. Goa continues to be part of the AGMUT cadre and waits for the Centre to transfer bureaucrats to the State.
The extension granted to the acting Chief Secretary renews the debate on the need for a separate cadre of the AIS for Goa, where the State would be the controlling authority and where bureaucrats once posted in would stay till the end of their career. Whatever the disadvantages of having a separate cadre – lack of promotional avenues and the State being burdened with officers who do not toe the government line – Goa needs to relook at having a separate cadre. Legally Goa has a right for a separate cadre, as Section 59 of the Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganization Act, 1987, enacted at the time of statehood, has a provision for a State administrative cadre, but this was never formed. It is perhaps time to renew the petition for a separate cadre or at least let the Centre know that Goa does not like to be taken for granted where bureaucratic postings are concerned.
