Patna, Jan. 11: The government today transferred 72 IAS officers, among them three divisional commissioners and 16 district magistrates, in an overhaul of the bureaucracy a year before the gen- eral elections.
Patna will have a new district magistrate in N. Saravana Kumar. The outgoing DM, Sanjay Kumar Singh, has been made special secretary in the chief minister’s secretariat.
Government and political sources agreed that the shuffle, one of the most sweeping in the second term of the Nitish Kumar regime, was a pre-election exercise as many trusted officers of the chief minister have been given plum postings. It is also seen as an attempt to augment the process of development as the performance of several departments and field officers was not found to be satisfactory.
The changes were notified by the general adminis- tration department. Some of them are:
Deepak Kumar, principal secretary, general administration department, has been shifted to cabinet coordination. A. Santosh Matthew, who was waiting for posting, has been appointed principal secretary in the social welfare department while B. Pradhan would join as principal secretary of mines and mineral department.
D.S. Gangwar, who too was waiting for posting, has been made principal secretary, general administration. Agriculture secretary N. Vijay Laxmi has been shifted to the backward and extremely backward welfare department.
MGNREGA commissioner Pradip Kumar has been appointed managing director of the Bihar State Finance Corporation. Sanjeev Hans, the chairman of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Ltd, has been given additional charge of managing director of Bihar State Seeds Corporation.
General administration department joint secretary Palka Sahani has been made managing director, South Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited. Excise commissioner Daya Nidhan Pandey will replace BREDA director Manish Kumar, who has been asked to assume charge as registrar of cooperative committees.
Ashok Kumar Mallik has been made special secretary, industry, while Devendra Verma, director (administration)-cum-additional secretary, agriculture, would be the director of land acquisition.
Among the district magistrates shifted were those of Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Bhojpur and Nawada.
