Cabinet secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha gets one year extension

NEW DELHI: The government on Monday gave an extension in tenure to cabinet secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha, who was slated to retire on June 12, for another year.

Now he will serve till June 12, 2019.

“The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved extension in service of Shri Pradeep Kumar Sinha, LAS (UP:1977) as Cabinet Secretary for a further period of one year beyond June 12, 2018,” said a ministry of personnel order.

The ACC is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with home minister Rajnath Singh as its other member.

The cabinet secretary is the country’s top bureaucrat and is the administrative head of the cabinet secretariat. The secretariat headed by him assists the government in decision making process by ensuring inter-ministerial coordination, ironing out differences among ministries or departments and evolving consensus.

This is the second extension that Sinha has been given. He had been first named as cabinet secretary for a fixed two-year term in May, 2015.

Sinha, who was then serving as power secretary, succeeded Ajit Seth, who held the position for four years.

Over the past few days, finance secretary and 1981 batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer Hansmukh Adhia was being considered as the top contender for the post of cabinet secretary in bureaucratic circles.