Seldom has a chief secretary differed with a chief minister on important policy matters, let alone on plum postings of officers the latter would want.

Current Bengal chief secretary Samar Ghosh, however, appears to be different.

Known to be a stickler for rules, he has always stood his ground whenever it has come to taking tough or unpleasant decisions or conveying the need for them to his higher-ups.

Ghosh became something of a hero to Bengal’s bureaucrats when he opposed Mamata Banerjee’s move to make Gautam Sanyal, a central secretariat service officer, her principal secretary, a source said.

What’s more, his point — that Sanyal could not be elevated to the post because he was not an IAS officer — prevailed over Mamata’s wishes.

Sanyal has always been close to Mamata since the day she became railway minister in 1999 and has been her trusted lieutenant.

The confidence Mamata reposed in Sanyal saw the officer coming to Calcutta from Delhi to take charge of the chief minister’s office (CMO) the moment she took over at Writers’ Buildings.

Finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that Sanyal was behaving as the “de facto chief secretary”, Ghosh is learnt to have conveyed to the chief minister his reservations about her plans to make Sanyal her principal secretary, a Writers’ official said.

What came in handy for Ghosh was that the IAS Officers’ Association too objected to Sanyal’s appointment.

“Samarbabu is the executive head of the state. How can he agree to the appointment of a junior non-IAS officer as principal secretary to the chief minister? Moreover, the IAS association also expressed their misgivings against Sanyal getting the post. That’s why Samarbabu made his stand known to the chief minister. She agreed with his stand,” the official added.

So, Mamata doesn’t have a principal secretary till date and has to make do with Sanyal as a mere secretary to her.

A source said Mamata could appoint Sanyal a special resident commissioner in Delhi to be posted in Calcutta so that he can shuttle between the two cities for official and “unofficial” work, the source said.

The chief secretary is described in IAS circles as a “competent” officer who has an excellent academic record. He taught physics at Presidency College for a while before joining the IAS.

“Samar should have been in academics. He is a firm officer. The new government won’t be able to get anything that is wrong signed by him,” said retired IAS officer Dipak Ghosh, who was once a Trinamul MLA.

Ghosh’s 17-year stint as finance department secretary is often remembered by his colleagues, who describe him as a “strict” officer, a Writers’ official said. Two instances deserve mention.

In 2008, during Left rule, then finance minister Asim Dasgupta had announced that 50 per cent of state government employees’ dearness allowance would be merged with their basic salary and that it would take retrospective effect from 2006.

On the same evening, Ghosh, then finance secretary, told Dasgupta the government would be going against the rules if the arrears were paid. Dasgupta, himself an economist and known to have had an overbearing attitude towards officials of his department, relented.

Ghosh also objected when the state government decided in 2009 that it would build the infrastructure for companies in the proposed IT township in Rajarhat-Bhangar. The plan was eventually scrapped.

According to a source, Ghosh had then remarked in a note that the government had no business spending Rs 380 crore on creating infrastructure for private companies.

After the new Trinamul-led government was ushered in on May 20 this year, IAS circles feared that Ghosh would be sidelined because of his “firmness” on administrative matters. But it turned out to be the opposite. Mamata recognised his worth and took him into confidence on important official matters.

Mamata entrusted Ghosh with finalising the accord with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha to set up the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. He was also given the job of looking into the issue of renaming Bengal.

Ghosh heads the committees set up to translate Mamata’s vision of turning Calcutta into London by beautifying the riverfront, and a panel to monitor the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

He has also been asked by the chief minister to inquire into alleged incidents of phone-tapping by the Left government.

“Because of his vast administrative experience, Madam (Mamata) didn’t want to sideline Ghosh. Rather, he has been given more responsibilities now,” a CMO official said.

Ghosh, however, cannot escape blame for being “silent” during his stint as finance secretary when Dasgupta was tabling zero-deficit budgets year after year, drawing criticism from the Opposition. “I am a government servant and not a policy maker. My job is only to execute decisions,” Ghosh is said to have told his aides then.

Asked now, Ghosh, however, said: “I am not authorised to speak on this issue.”

Anindya Sengupta