Delhi Finance Secy SN Sahai moved to Power Ministry as addl secretary

NEW DELHI: Delhi Finance Secretary Sanjeev Nandan Sahai has been transferred and appointed as additional secretary in the Ministry of Power, according to an official order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training.

Sahai, the senior-most IAS officer in the Delhi government, has taken up several assignments, including of acting chief secretary, home secretary and finance secretary, in the AAP government. Both Sahai and Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash are 1986-batch IAS officers. Sahai has been appointed additional secretary in the Ministry of Power, the order issued on Wednesday said.

Since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has come to power, he has been playing an active role in making the budget of the Delhi government. Sahai was considered to be close to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, but when Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash was allegedly assaulted at the CM's residence in February, he also opposed and participated in protest against the government.

The AAP government and bureaucracy have been at loggerheads on a range of issues, including the alleged assault on the chief secretary, in the past. Since the alleged assault on Prakash, the Delhi government employees have been observing a two-minute silence in their respective offices and senior bureaucrats have also been boycotting meetings with the AAP ministers to lodge their protest.

Presently, Kejriwal government is facing acute shortage of bureaucrats after arrest of Chief Minister's then Principal Secretary Rajender Prasad. Till now, no any IAS Officer has been deputed in the Delhi Chief Minister's office. After Media hype, two DANICs officers, which had been posted by Raj- Niwas two Secretaries Pravesh Ranjan Jha and Prashant Kumar Panda as special secretary to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Of one, Panda has been transferred to Puducherry following an order of the Union Home Ministry last month.

In December 2015, the Delhi government bureaucrats had gone on mass leave to protest against the suspension of two Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service (DANICS) cadre officers. BJP legislator and Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta claimed that as many as 22 senior IAS officers have so far left the Delhi government before completing their tenure, and charged that the officials were not willing to work with the present dispensation.

"There exists hardly any workable communication and interaction between political bosses and bureaucracy. Most of the IAS and DANICS officers are not willing to work with the Kejriwal government and are yearning to get out at the earliest opportunity,"

Gupta claimed.