THE government has kickstarted the process of forming the 15th Finance Commission after appointing 1984 batch Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS Arvind Mehta as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Advance Cell of 15th Finance Commission, at the rank of a union additional secretary. The advance cell is created to make preparatory arrangements for setting up of the Commission. Meanwhile, the government had approved the appointment of five private secretaries to ministers including Nirmala Sitharaman (defence), Suresh Prabhu (commerce and industry) and Piyush Goyal (railway). Here below are the details of the appointments: