Rajasthan to have its first Muslim chief secretary; Naveen Patnaik appoints Bijay Patnaik to lead Orissa bureaucracy

TWO Indian states, Rajasthan and Orissa, will have new chief secretaries. While Rajasthan is making history by appointing a Muslim officer, 1975-batch IAS Salauddin Ahmed, to lead the state bureaucracy, Orissa will have 1976 batch IAS Bijay Kumar Patnaik as the new chief secretary.

In Rajasthan, appointment of Salauddin Ahmed will send a strong signal to the minority community that their interests would now be taken care of. There were speculations that Abhimanyu Singh, a 1974 batch IAS currently posted in at the Unesco office in Beijing, would clinch the chief secretary’s post. New chief secretary Ahmed, an MA in history, has mostly served in the state itself except his stint as deputy secretary and director in the ministry of textile back in 1986-91. Ahmed has a degree in public management from IDS, University of Sussex, UK.

New Orissa chief secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik has currently been serving as principal secretary to Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik. Patnaik, a 1976 batch IAS, has currently been serving as the principal secretary to Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik.

Secretaries in Action

Secretary in the ministry of shipping K Mohandas, 1974 batch Kerala cadre IAS, on Monday emphasised the need for ports to augment capacity and increase it to several times more than the present capacity. He was chairing a meeting of senior officers on Maritime State Development Council (MSDC) in Chennai. The meeting was meant to find strategies to curb delays and queuing at ports.