Ex-PMO official Sanjay Mitra to be new West Bengal chief secretary

WEST Bengal will have a relatively young officer, 1982 batch IAS and ex-PMO hand Sanjay Mitra as the new chief secretary. The 53-year old officer who enjoys good personal rapport with Mamata Banerjee’s confidante Gautam Sanyal (Read: Sanyal is Mamata's Pulok), was one of the two prominent Mitras handpicked by Banerjee when she moved from Delhi to Kolkata last year to take over as West Bengal CM. No prize for guessing...
The other Mitra was Amit Mitra, then secretary general of Ficci, and now the finance minister of the state.
There are 13 West Bengal cadre IAS officers, some of whom are on Central deputation, who belong to batches from 1981 to 1976. In other words, all of those officers are senior to Mitra. The other names that too cropped up as front-runners for Bengal’s top bureaucrat job were 1976 batch officer AK Chanda, 1978 batch officer Jaya Dasgupta and Mitra’s batch-mate SK Nurul Haque. Had Jaya Dasgupta been chosen, West Bengal would have got the first woman chief secretary. Similarly, Nurul Haque’s selection would have given the state the first Muslim chief secretary.
But Banerjee was clear in her mind that she would pick up Mitra to head the state’s bureaucracy. As early as June 5, 2012, BoI in a post titled, “Other Mitra: Ex-PMO official Sanjay Mitra may eventually become chief secretary” wrote: “…Desks are being cleared for Mitra to become first an additional chief secretary and then chief secretary of Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal.”
Mitra, a Harvard Mason fellow from US, was on Central deputation, first in finance ministry, then rural development ministry and finally in PMO. He was in PMO for seven years and had worked closely with PM’s adviser TKA Nair and current principal secretary to PM Pulok Chatterji.

Action and Appointments
a) Radha Krishna Mathur, a 1977 batch Manipur-Tripura IAS, presently secretary in ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises, has been appointed as secretary, department of defence production in place of Shekhar Agarwal, also a 1977 batch UP cadre IAS who is retiring on September 30, 2012.
b) Ms Rashmi Verma, a 1982 batch Bihar cadre IAS  presently joint secretary in department of defence production, has been appointed as additional secretary in the department of revenue.
c) Ajay Narayan Jha, a 1982 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre IAS, presently joint secretary and financial adviser in the ministry of human resource development, has been appointed as Officer on Special Duty in the Advance Cell of the 14th Finance Commission, in the rank and pay of additional secretary.