New Delhi: Can you think of an IAS officer who can remove a chief secretary who got into the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) 11 years before him? Praveen Prakash, a 1994-batch IAS officer who now serves as Principal Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) of Jagan Mohan Reddy, did exactly that a year ago.
Andhra Pradesh got a new chief secretary last week in Adityanath Das, a 1987-batch IAS officer. But the stakes of power remain pretty much the same a year down the line.
Although much junior to the half-a-dozen advisers in the CMO, Prakash, civil servants in the state say, is still the one who calls the shots. The two posts he holds — Principal Secretary to the CM as well as secretary of the crucial General Administration Department (GAD), which controls all senior appointments in the state — give him enormous influence over all crucial decisions in the state.
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