Gujarat shifts 67 bureaucrats

In a major bureaucratic reshuffle, the Gujarat government on late Monday night transferred 67 IAS officials.

This is the first major reshuffle after the new BJP government has been formed.

As per the notification issued by General Administration Department, the key changes are the changes of District Collectors in 21 of the state's 33 districts, including four major cities of Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot and Vadodara.

Ahmedabad Collector Avantika Singh has been replaced by Vikrant Pandey who till recently was her counterpart in Rajkot, the hometown of Chief Minister Vijay Rupani. She has been transferred to Gandhinagar as Director of Employment and Training and ex-officio Managing Director of Gujarat Skill Development Mission. Pandey, on the other hand, has been replaced by his Junagadh counterpart Rahul Gupta.

M.S. Patel, the Collector of Surat, has been moved to Gandhinagar as the Commissioner of Municipalities Administration, a post recently created by the Urban Development and Urban Housing department. He is succeeded in Surat by Dhaval Patel.

Amreli Collector S.L. Amrani has been appointed Municipal Commissioner of Gandhinagar, while Vadodara Collector Ponugumatla Bharathi has been appointed as the State Project Director of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Gandhinagar. Dahod Collector, Ranjeeth Kumar J. has been transferred and appointed as the Commissioner, Tribal Development.

Shalani Agrawal would now be new Vadodara Collector, while Director, Labour, M.A. Gandhi has been transferred as the Municipal Commissioner of the Bhavnagar Municipal Corporation.

--IANS

amc/vd