Patna, Oct. 12: Sixteen officers of Bihar Administrative Service (BAS) have been promoted to the rank of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, bringing relief to the state where a number of seats of the top job have been vacant.

A notification to this effect was recently issued by department of personnel and training, which works under the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions.

While eight of BAS officers have been promoted against the vacancies of 2006, the same number of officers has been promoted for vacancies of 2007 (See chart).

With these promotions, the state would now have services of 169 administrative service officers.

Bihar has a sanctioned strength of 326 IAS officers and lack of sufficient number of officers has forced the state government to assign the charge of more than one department to several IAS officers. For example, the general administration department personnel secretary Deepak Kumar holds the additional charge of tourism department, principal secretary of labour department Vyasji holds the additional charge of disaster management department. Principal secretary of industry department C.K. Mishra holds the additional charge of sugarcane industry department.

Out of the total sanctioned strength of 326 IAS officers, the state can have 227 directly recruited IAS officers and 99 posts have to be filled up through promotions.

Of the 227 directly recruited IAS officers, Bihar has 141 such officers while five of them are from other state cadres who are working in Bihar on deputation. Forty-one IAS officers of Bihar cadre are on central/state deputation. As far as 99 posts of promoted IAS officers are concerned, the state has services of just 12 such officers and after promotion of 16 more officers this number would go up to 28, which is still far short of the total sanctioned strength of officers made IAS through promotion.

“We have expedited the process of making proposals for the promotion of state services officers in the IAS for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010,” a source in the state general administration department told The Telegraph.

He said, there are 29 vacancies to be filled through promotion for 2008 and figures for 2009 and 2010 were 14 and nine respectively. After filling of these vacancies the state would have a sufficient number of IAS officers,” added the source. He said the necessary documents of deserving BAS officers would be sent to the Union Public Service Commission by the end of this year after which the process of promotion would be initiated at the central level.

Regarding the shortage of directly recruited officers, the source said the state had drawn the Centre’s attention and the latter had assured the state that this shortage would be brought down over a period of time. “The Centre has started working in this direction and unlike in the past when four to five directly recruited IAS officers were being given the Bihar cadre, the Centre allotted Bihar cadre to nine IAS officers of 2010 batch,” said the source.

Giving reasons for delay in promotion of BAS officers as is evident from the fact the latest promotions were those of 2006 and 2007, the general administrative department source said it happened because of legal problems as few people challenged the promotion ma-de in 2006 in the court and only after the court disposed of the matter the promotion issued could be taken up.

Names of state services officers who have been promoted to IAS rank

2006 Dhirendra Mohan Jha, Anil Kumar Verma, Lakshmeshwar Jha, Virendra Kumar Singh, Parmanand Jha, Ram Babu Singh, Dharmeshwar Thakur, Vijay Kumar Singh

2007 Raghwendra Jha, Ram Roop Singh, Upendra Kumar, Anil Kumar, Rajiv Kumar Singh, Misbah Bari, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Ifthkar Hasan