Saran Singh: 10 things to know about India’s oldest surviving IAS (Rtd), aged 95

Photo Courtesy: IAS Association Twitter

ON Saturday, West Bengal IAS Association felicitated the oldest serving IAS (retired) officer — Saran Singh, aged 95. An IAS of 1948 batch, he belonged to the first batch of officers post-Independence and went up in the administrative hierarchy to become union steel secretary and chief secretary of Bihar. Here are 10 things you may like to know about this Sikh officer and his journey from Peshawar to Kolkata: 

Retired IAS Anil Swarup to head govt panel on NCC restructuring

RETIRED IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre Anil Swarup will head a government panel to suggest measures to strengthen National Cadet Corps (NCC) and National Service Scheme (NSS). While  announcing the move on Tuesday, the government said in a statement that suitable representatives from the NCC, the ministry of youth affairs and ministry of HRD are being…

1983 batch IIS Sitanshu Kar is new GoI principal spokesman; retired Karnataka IAS Khuntia appointed IRDAI boss

1983 BATCH Indian Information Service officer Sitanshu Ranjan Kar is the new principal spokesperson of the Government of India and Director General of Press Information Bureau. The officer who had a 35 years long career and is mostly known for his decade-long innings as the spokesman of the ministry of defence, assumed office on Tuesday. After joining the IIS in 1983, Kar had first joined the…

Know more about 103 years old ICS officer Valluri Kameshwara Rao

ON SATURDAY last, the oldest ICS officer Valluri Kameshwara Rao or VK Rao as he is popularly known, turned 103. A 1937 batch Indian Civil Service officer, Rao was chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh and principal secretary to the President N Sanjeeva Reddy et al. In a message in a social media post, the IAS Association said: “Warm greetings to the oldest ICS officer Shri VK Rao ICS who turns 103 today on July 15. #Amazing #ICS #IAS #Salute #Respect”. The British-day ICS later came to be known as IAS, or Indian Administrative Service. A product of Loyola College and Cambridge University, Rao was first posted at...

3 retired IAS, ex-member in Railway Board appointed as executive members in Central Administrative Tribunal

THREE retired IAS officers — GC Pati of Odisha cadre, R Vijay Kumar of Tamil Nadu cadre and Ms Nandita Chatterjee of West Bengal cadre — and one retired officer belonging to Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers, Navin Tondon, were on Monday appointed as Executive Members in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), the agency that is responsible for adjudication of disputes on recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services and posts in connection with the affairs of the government and local authorities. The four officers were appointed for a period of…

Alka Sirohi to officiate as UPSC chairman; 10 things to know about this retired IAS

ON SATURDAY, Alka Sirohi, former IAS of 1974 batch and member of Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) was asked to perform duties as Chairman of UPSC, with effect from September 21, and till further orders or until the completion of her term as UPSC Member on January 3, 2017, whichever is earlier. In other words, she will be the temporary head of UPSC after Deepak Gupta had retired. Here BoI presents 10 things about this retired officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, including her education, postings and training in classical Hindustani music:

Why retired IAS SK Panda is given Louis Pasteur Award — the "Nobel Prize" in sericulture, silk industry

SK Panda

LAST month, former union textile secretary and 1980 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre retired IAS Sanjay Kumar Panda received a unique recognition — Louis Pasteur Award for the year 2016, an award considered as the Nobel Prize in sericulture and silk industry. Panda was given the award during the 24th International Congress on Sericulture and Silk Industry held last month in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok. Panda, who did his post-graduation in chemistry before getting into IAS, actually took sericulture on a mission mode so much so that it was for his study on mulberry sericulture that he was awarded PhD in economics by Odisha’s Utkal University. In fact, Louis Pasteur was a…

Antrix-Devas Scam: Retired IAS takes to Facebook to question CBI; releases her emails sent to the investigative agency

Veena Rao (Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

“I hear from some newspaper reports that the CBI appears to have named me in a chargesheet regarding the Antrix Devas Contract. Shocking, laughable and ludicrous”, says retired IAS and former union secretary Veena Rao in a long Facebook post, making it possibly the first case where a charge-sheeted civil servant (in her case retired) takes to social media to argue a case. Retired in 2009, Rao’s name cropped up in the case as she was an additional secretary working in the department of space from December 2004 to December 2005. The ongoing CBI probe is related to…

Gujarat Model, UP Babu: 5 reasons why PM chooses Nripendra Misra as his principal secretary

WHEN former UP cadre IAS of 1967 batch Nripendra Misra was made principal secretary to prime minister, inarguably the most powerful bureaucrat’s post in any government, many in the corridors got surprised. How come prime minister Narendra Modi decided to handpick this 69-year-old bureaucrat from Uttar Pradesh to assist him in replicating the Gujarat model across India? Here are 5 possible reasons behind Modi choosing Misra as principal secretary:

K for Kuniyil, K for Kailashnathan: The KK who will play the key role in Narendra Modi’s PMO, if…

NOVEMBER, 2010. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was on a two-day visit to Kerala. He first landed up at Kochi, and then visited Thrissur in a helicopter to attend a function. Mind it. It was not a political rally, but the marriage ceremony of daughter of one of his most trusted bureaucrats, Kuniyil Kailashnathan, or KK, as he is known to his friends and colleagues. And if Modi becomes India’s next prime minister, something that will be known only on May 16, it’s KK…

Damaad Shree Video: BJP drags UPSC member and retired Haryana cadre IAS to Robert Vadra land deals

A RETIRED IAS officer of Haryana cadre and current UPSC member Chhatar Singh has been on BJP’s firing line, as the principal opposition party on Sunday sharpened its attack on Robert Vadra’s land deals by releasing a video named “Damaad Shree” and accusing Haryana government and earlier Congress-led Rajasthan regime of colluding with Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law in expediting out-of-turn…

Who all will work in Telangana? Govt sets up advisory panel under retired IAS Kamalanathan

COME June 2, 2014, Telangana will formally be India’s 29th state. But what will be the fate of the government employees including officers currently working across Andhra Pradesh? The government has now constituted an advisory committee under 1965 batch Andhra Pradesh cadre retired IAS CR Kamalanathan, mainly to determine who will work in Telangana and who in the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh. The other members of the panel include...

Writing IAS (Rtd) in letterhead by former IAS an impropriety, not offence: HC

IS THE use of titles like IAS, IFS, IRS etc. after retirement of an officer “highly irregular” and “quite unbecoming” that it attracts section 170 of the Indian Penal Code for which the punishment could be a two-year jail term. Here are interesting observations by two benches of Kerala High Court, latest one comprising…

Ex-IAS VS Gopalakrishnan continues his passion for singing, blogging, painting...

Comforting, a Gopalakrishnan painting

FORGET for a moment the high-voltage 24X7 drama at Raisina Hills. Instead, meet this 1962 batch former IAS officer VS Gopalakrishnan. To give a perspective of his age and time, he is 12 years senior to India’s senior-most bureaucrat, cabinet secretary AK Seth. Yes, the GenNext of Twitter, Blogging and You Tube was not even born when this veteran Maharashtra cadre IAS spent his prime time at corridors of power.

But just do a search of VS Gopalakrishnan in YouTube. You will spot hundreds of Rafi, Mukesh and Talat songs sung by him. And you will be surprised to know he is a regular blogger too. That’s not all. The babu of yesteryears continues his passion for paintings and creates masterpieces like Tabla Player, Marathi Woman, Mohenjodaro Man and Marilyn Monroe. Armed with an American diploma in cartooning 50 years ago, Gopalakrishnan is also a distinguished cartoonist and has so far published five cartoon books.

Tabla Player

Masters in physics, Gopalakrishnan took voluntary retirement from IAS in 1995, and joined Mumbai’s World Trade Centre as Director General. And don’t think he forgot his serious prose amid painting, cartooning and singing. After all, Gopalakrishnan is the author of the much acclaimed book: “WTO and India: My insights”.

babu blogger’s request: No one knows how babu blogger looks like. Nor has anyone guessed his age or sex. Dear VS Gopalakrishnan, would you kindly do a cartoon of anonymous babu blogger who has penned over 1,000 action-packed stories of hits and misses in India's corridors of power.

Action and Appointment

a) RC Mishra, a 1978 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre IAS and additional secretary, ministry of urban development, has been appointed as Central Provident Fund Commissioner under the ministry of labour and employment in the rank and pay of additional secretary in place of 1976 batch Assam cadre IAS Samirendra Chatterjee. Mishra’s central deputation tenure has also been extended till he retires on November 30, 2012.

Japanese bureaucrats face highest ever bonus cuts; Indian babus are still lucky

THE Central government employees of Japan face the largest-ever bonus cuts this year, according to news agency Bloomberg quoting a report published by Yomiuri newspaper. The National Personnel Authority plans to recommend to the country’s Parliament that bonuses be cut by about 8.9 percent, according to the Yomiuri. This is done in tandem with the wage cut and trimming of bonuses of the employees working in private organizations. This means Indian civil servants are a lucky lot as their salary and allowances (DA) have risen continuously during this era of financial turbulence, thanks to the implementation of the 6th pay commission recommendations and the government’s conscious attempt to woo the Central government employees by generously enhancing the dearness allowances before the general elections. In fact, the Labor Ministry of Japan has recently reported that wages for the average Japanese worker fell at the fastest pace during the month of June as companies cut bonuses to protect ever-declining profits. According to reports, monthly pay including overtime and bonuses dropped 7.1% from a year earlier to 430,620 yen ($4,500). Bonuses fell by whopping 14.5%. Full-time workers in Japan get about 25% of their annual salary in two lump payments, one in summer and the other in winter. Union steel minister Virbhadra Singh booked in a corruption case registered by a retired IAS Union steel minister and former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife have been booked in a corruption case by the state vigilance bureau after it was alleged that an audio CD released two years ago contained the voice of Singh and his wife talking to a retired bureaucrat Mohinder Lal about alleged corruption. Mr Lal has since died. The case was registered on a complaint by a retired IAS officer S M Katwal. Mr Singh has termed the FIR a cheap gimmick which shall collapse under its own weight. UPSC prelims results out, Mains from October 23 Union Service Public Commission (UPSC) has announced the result of the civil services (preliminary) examination, 2009 held on May 17, 2009. The successful candidates have qualified for admission to the civil services (main) examination, scheduled to be held from October 23, 2009. For any clarification, one can make a phone call at 011-23385271, 011-23381125 and 011-23098543. The result is available on the UPSC website www.upsc.gov.in