With about 20 secretaries in different central ministries due to retire over the next six months, the new government to be formed by the third week of May will have its hands full.
Virtually every central ministry of importance will have to get a new secretary by October. The finance ministry will have a completely new team.
New secretaries will also have to be appointed to head the ministries of commerce, heavy industries, steel, petroleum, tourism, textiles, information and broadcasting, labour and information technology.
That's a massive task and an opportunity as well for the new government. Identifying the right Indian Administrative Services officer to head a central ministry is not a very difficult job, as there is a long list of empanelled secretaries waiting to be tapped by the government.
But what can become difficult is to get the right successor to Cabinet Secretary Kamal Pande, who is due to complete his two-year tenure by October 31.
It is no longer an issue of getting the right person for the top civil servant's job. The need to create the perception of having chosen the best bureaucrat for the coveted job is equally important.
The decision attracts close scrutiny also because the government is now open to offering a minimum tenure of two years to a cabinet secretary.
Earlier, the tenure of a cabinet secretary would terminate along with his retirement from service. But that meant that the top civil servant often spent only about a few months in his new job. To avoid this, the government began giving a two-year tenure to a bureaucrat chosen for the cabinet secretary's job, irrespective of his date of superannuation.
There are clear advantages of a minimum two-year tenure for the cabinet secretary. But there are also some disadvantages. For instance, officers belonging to the 1967 batch might never be considered for the cabinet secretary's job.
There are only 17 officers left in the 1967 batch and all of them will retire before the completion of Kamal Pande's (a 1966 batch officer) two-year tenure as cabinet secretary in October 2004. In fact, there are quite a few very competent IAS officers from the 1968 batch also, who will be retiring before Pande completes his term.
So, who should be Pande's successor? The new government to be formed by the third week of May will have to make up its mind on that issue before June or July.
For, that is when several IAS officers from the 1967 and 1968 batches retire from service. If the government wants to give any of these officers a fair chance to be considered for the cabinet secretary's job, it must decide on Pande's successor quickly and appoint the new incumbent as an officer on special duty in the cabinet secretariat to take over from Pande in November with a two-year tenure.
Who are these contenders? The name of Commerce and Industries Secretary Dipak Chatterjee is likely to figure at the top of this list of contenders. Chatterjee had been cleared for the post of chairman of the newly-created Competition Commission of India (CCI), till the Supreme Court raised a few objections.
The apex court is expected to give its final verdict by June. If it goes against the appointment of Chatterjee as the CCI chairman, then the government has to plan afresh. Chatterjee, acknowledged by all to be a competent officer, may lose the race for the cabinet secretary's job since he retires at the end of next month. He can only hope for a favourable Supreme Court verdict permitting a civil servant to head the CCI.
Samar B Mohapatra, textiles secretary, is the other contender from the 1968 batch of IAS officers. But his big disadvantage is that he, too, retires by the end of next month. There are many in the government who believe that Mohapatra can still make it to the cabinet secretary's job if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is returned to power at the Centre. He is considered to be close to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
That leaves two IAS officers from the 1968 batch, both of whom retire a few months after Pande's tenure comes to an end. They are Rajeeva Ratna Shah, planning secretary, and Nripendra Mishra, telecom secretary. If the NDA does return to power, as is widely believed, Shah does not have much of a chance to be considered for the top civil servant's job.
A high-profile bureaucrat, Shah was recently shifted from the department of industrial policy and planning to the planning ministry and this was seen as a sign of a decline in his importance and clout in the government. On the other hand, Mishra was moved out of the fertiliser ministry and made secretary in charge of the department of telecommunications.
Both belong to the Uttar Pradesh cadre (which incidentally has produced the largest number of cabinet secretaries so far), but right now Mishra seems to have an edge over Shah.
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