Karan Avtar out, Vini Mahajan is Punjab’s first woman chief secretary
Newly appointed chief secy Vini Mahajan is wife of state police chief Dinkar Gupta, owes her rise to professional credentials
CHANDIGARH : Senior IAS officer Vini Mahajan, 55, on Friday took over as the Punjab’s first woman chief secretary, replacing Karan Avtar Singh.
A 1987-batch IAS officer, Mahajan is the wife of state’s director general of police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta. She will also hold the additional charge of principal secretary, personnel and vigilance.
Singh, a 1984-batch IAS officer, was shunted out of the top bureaucratic position just two months before his superannuation, due on August 31. Singh is tipped to be the first chairman of the Punjab Water Regulatory Authority.
Singh has been posted as special chief secretary, governance reforms and public grievances, according to the government order. The officer’s transfer is being viewed in the corridors of power as direct fallout of his run-in with the ministers who demanded his sacking for his ‘attitude and demeanour’ at a meeting held to discuss the excise policy. He had to apologise to ministers and was also divested of the additional charge of financial commissioner.
CHANDIGARH: The ascent of Vini Mahajan, a 1987-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, to the top position of Punjab bureaucracy is a story of many firsts.
Mahajan is the first woman chief secretary of the state. She is the wife of Punjab Police chief Dinkar Gupta. This is the first time in bureaucratic echelons that a couple is simultaneously serving as the chief secretary and director general of police (DGP), the highest administrative and police posts, in the state, and perhaps anywhere in the country.
Gupta, also a 1987-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, was appointed as head of the state police in February last year. He was empanelled by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) last month for the post of director general or DG equivalent at the Centre.
Another first is that both Punjab and Haryana’s chief secretaries simultaneously are women. In Haryana, 1983 batch IAS officer Keshni Anand Arora, who is not the first woman CS there though, currently holds the top bureaucratic position. Also, Mahajan will have more than four years as the chief secretary if she continues in the office till her superannuation in October 2024.
A career bureaucrat of 1987 batch and mother-of-two, softspoken Mahajan owes her meteoric rise to her professional credentials and varied experience in the field and at the Centre where she handled economic ministries.
An economics graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi,
Mahajan did here postgraduation from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, where she was placed on the ‘roll of honour’ and later also received the ‘Distinguished Alumnus Award’. Mahajan, a decisive and no-nonsense bureaucrat, had served in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) from 2005-12 during Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, handling matters relating to finance, industry, commerce, telecom and IT. Her father, BB Mahajan, was also an IAS officer of the Punjab cadre.
SUPERSEDES 5 IAS OFFICERS
Mahajan has been appointed as the chief secretary, superseding five IAS officers senior to her. They include KBS Sidhu (1984), Arun Goel, C Roul, Kalpana Baruah Mittal and Satish Chandra (all four from 1985).
Sidhu, the senior-most bureaucrat in Punjab, is due to retire in July 2021. Both Goel and Roul are currently on central deputation, whereas Mittal is additional chief secretary, cooperation, in the state government. Chandra, who has three months left for superannuation, is additional chief secretary, home.
KARAN AVTAR’S UNCEREMONIOUS EXIT
Karan Avtar Singh, who is due to retire on August 31, has been posted as special chief secretary (SPS), governance reforms and public grievances. Though Singh had apologised to the cabinet ministers in the presence of chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on May 27 to settle the unprecedented run-in with the minister, his shifting did not come as a surprise to several of his colleagues in the state bureaucracy.
Congress ministers and MLAs, who called a truce as the chief minister stood by the chief secretary, were not happy with the IAS officer’s continuation in the top post. They were pressuring the CM to remove him and the recent government notification to adopt the two-rule fixed tenure rule for IAS officers also riled them up.
Singh’s new posting as SPS after he remained the chief secretary for more than three years has not gone down well with some of his bureaucratic colleagues who feel that he had just two months left for superannuation and should have opted for premature retirement.