It is IAS against IPS as the Roopa vs Sindhuri battle rages on social media

The hierarchies between various all-India services have begun to melt, leading to increased friction between them

Spats between members of the two all-India services, the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service, happen all too often now. Yet, by most reckoning, the intensity of the one currently raging in Karnataka between D Roopa, IPS, and Rohini Sindhuri, IAS, has rocked the officers from both services.

There have been other incidents, such as the one between Roopan Deol Bajaj, IAS, and KPS Gill, IPS, about 30 years ago over his unseemly behaviour (Gill was held guilty on charges of molestation by the Supreme Court). However, of late, the tussle between the two services has been less personal and more about their relative primacy. 

This has become intense as more officers from the central civil services have taken up senior-level posts in the ministries. The number of IAS officers serving as joint secretaries in the central government ministries is now less than 80. There are more than 250 such posts in the ministries, excluding equivalent field-level posts in various organisations like the railways, tax, or audit departments.

There is a crisis at the middle management levels, as both IAS and IPS officers now hugely prefer the state rather than a central government posting. This week, the department of personnel and training at the Centre issued a circular headlined “Current shortage of officers at deputy secretary/director level under the Central Staffing Scheme and possible measures to deal with the shortage”.

Because officers wish to stay back in the states, the hierarchies between the overcrowded posts of all-India services, like IAS and IPS, have begun to melt. In each state, there are dozens of officers in the top grades being designated as additional chief secretaries in the case of IAS or as directors-general of police for IPS. The ranks are the same. In states like Uttar Pradesh, there are now 30 such officers; Karnataka and West Bengal have 20 each. It means all the key departments of these state governments are headed by officers with the same seniority. So, these additional chief secretaries and directors-general have no reason to obey the orders of anyone who is just notionally deemed superior.

Understandably, no senior bureaucrat wishes to speak officially on the unseemly spat between Roopa and Sindhuri. Neither the IAS officers association nor the IPS officers association was willing to speak on the record.

The effect is showing. Just a couple of years ago, when Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar issued orders to post an IPS officer, Kala Ramachandran, as the principal secretary of the state transport department, there was an outcry from the IAS lobby. They did not dispute that the officer met all the norms for holding such a post, but they contended that these posts should be held by IAS officers only. Surprisingly, state home minister Anil Vij publicly objected to the transfer order issued by his chief minister. Vij risked a fight with his chief minister to please the IAS officers of the state. 

The roles were reversed in 2022 when the Centre's department of personnel and training issued empanelment orders to post additional secretaries to various ministries. The order announced the appointment of 25 IAS and 3 IPS officers to the additional secretary grade. The IPS lobby protested the limited representation of IPS officers in the list.

Frictions have risen because the roles of senior government officers have increasingly come into the public eye. Though there are strict social media rules for what they can and cannot post, these rules are often violated.

Officers can have a social media presence, but those are supposed to be used cautiously. In Karnataka, for instance, in December 2021, the department of personnel and administrative reforms issued a circular specifying the rules. Employees were not supposed to use their handles to comment on the government. Disciplinary action, it said, would be taken against officials who embarrassed the government by posting such photographs and videos. Roopa and Sindhuri have violated the instruction that they must not approach the media to express their differences of opinion on administration.

The Karnataka government has rightly decided to transfer them out of their present roles without any posting orders under the same set of instructions. "Though there is an appropriate forum to raise your allegations/grievances, you have expressed the same directly to the media. This has the potential to cause disrepute and embarrassment to the government…," the order issued by the general administration department reads.

The state political executive hopes that since both have been transferred out of their posts, it will buy space, cool down tempers, and give the public other things to worry about.