The state government has finally ensured not to overlook, but consider seniority as the only yardstick by naming the 1989 batch Shanti Kumari as the next Chief Secretary. She succeeds Somesh Kumar, who has had to exit gracefully after the state High Court’s strong verdict quashing the CAT’s earlier order. Added to that, even the Centre responded with alacrity by dashing off a letter to Somesh Kumar directing him to honour the High Court verdict and shift to the Andhra Pradesh cadre immediately. By sheer coincidence, it is your daily which had raised this question when other newspapers went gaga over projecting the 1991 batch officers either the present Finance Secretary Ramakrishna Rao or the Municipal Administration Secretary Aravind Kumar as the front runners.
However, some newspapers indeed included the 1988 batch Shanti Kumar’s name too. Yet, the fact remains that it is your paper that posed strong questions to the KCR government like, “Whether it would like to be branded as anti-women?”, while reminding how he overlooked the very same women officers while choosing Somesh Kumar in the past—in a shocking instance, overlooking close to a dozen senior other IAS officers! Your paper also dared to ask the honourable Chief Minister, if he would like to repeat the same mistake, as Shanti Kumari is not a stranger to him as she did work in the CMO not so long ago. Your daily’s effort had been to raise the voice for justice whenever necessary and we sincerely thank all those former bureaucrats who too expressed their displeasure over the present government violating the set norms, which no other state has dared to, according to them. The new Chief Secretary of the state Shanti Kumaari will be retiring in April 2025. A clear 2 years and four months. No government should pick and choose the officers who are amenable to them, and instead go by the Rule Book, by letter and spirit, to provide honest and transparent governance. Already, the KCR government has come under sharp criticism over the alleged diversion of funds of the gram panchayats, and had your paper not raised these genuine questions, the KCR government might have gone the way he choose to overlook the seniority of such upright and honest women officers.
- EDITOR
