On Their Way Out

Senior bureaucrats in Bengal want to move out before Mamata Banerjee moves in.

The state has suffered an exodus of its best and brightest over the past three-and-a-half decades. Now, with the winds of political change sweeping West Bengal, senior IAS and IPS officers are in a hurry to leave for safer postings in New Delhi, other states, UN agencies and other bodies. There has been a rush of applications—ever since the Lok Sabha election last year suggested that the Trinamool juggernaut’s advance would be unstoppable—from IAS and IPS officers to leave the state before the Assembly polls next year. With the state administration having been completely politicised over the 33 long years of CPM-led Left Front rule, many IAS and IPS officers are closely identified with the ruling dispensation and fear they’ll have to face the mercurial Mamata Banerjee’s fury once she assumes power in Kolkata. Hence, they want to leave Bengal and seek alternatives in New Delhi and other states. The list of those asking for deputation to the Centre and even inter-cadre deputation to other states is long and revealing—it includes at least one additional chief secretary rank officer, four secretaries and a few principal secretaries. Even Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s trusted lieutenant and his principal secretary, Subesh Das, whose brother is the state’s information technology minister, has sought a posting in a Central organisation. A telling example is that of Burdwan Superintendent of Police R Rajsekharan, who has sought deputation to his home state Tamil Nadu on the plea that he would like his children to learn their mother tongue Tamil—as their second language—and that would only be possible in that state. Rajsekharan has often been accused by the Trinamool of being biased and a CPM stooge, and is high on Mamata’s hit list. As for the state’s own civil service officers, they’ve started distancing themselves from the CPM and are getting close to the Trinamool. So much so that the CPM has started accusing many officers of acting as ‘agents’ of the Trinamool, an accusation that the opposition had hurled against the babus so far. Poetic justice, this.

bureaucratsMamata BanerjeeWest Bengal