State urges Centre for Chief Secy’s ‘extension of service’

Kolkata: The Bengal government has written to the Centre seeking another extension of service for the state Chief Secretary (CS) BP Gopalika who is retiring on August 31.

Sources said that Mamata Banerjee’s government is not ready to appoint anybody as the new CS under the current situation. As it does not want to make any immediate changes, the state is keen on extending his tenure. It has therefore appealed to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs for an extension of the current CS Gopalika.

It is yet to be seen if the Union Ministry of Home Affairs gives the clearance or if it asks the state to recommend a list containing names of 2-3 officials for the post of CS.

As per norms, the state government needs to get approval from the Centre while giving an appointment to the officials in the post of CS or the Director General of Police (DGP). State governments can recommend the names of 2-3 senior most IAS officers to the Home Ministry. The Centre can give its approval to any of the officials out of the state’s list. The States can also seek an extension of a current CS.

State government sources said that after coming to power for three consecutive terms, the Narendra Modi government in the Centre has also given extensions to some of the Central government officials. Incidentally, the Centre recently extended the tenure of Ajit Doval, former IB chief and Kerala cadre IPS officer, as the National Security Advisor (NSA) and re-appointed PK Mishra as the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi.

The development took place soon after Modi took office as the PM for the third term.

State has also told the Centre that CS’s tenure is going to end by August 31. The Centre has to inform the decision to the state within August 30. State government is

expecting that the Centre would also respond positively to its appeal upholding “cooperative federalism”.

The Union government in May this year had accepted the Bengal government’s plea for the extension of service of CS Gopalika. Earlier, he was supposed to retire on May 31 and the state government had sought an extension of service on the ground that his scheduled date of retirement would be before the seventh, and final, phase of ongoing Lok Sabha polls on June 1.

Meanwhile, the Centre last June had agreed to a Bengal government request to extend the tenure of the then CS HK Dwivedi.