Officers make beeline for plum postings

Barely has the new BJP-led government assumed office that civil servants and police officers have started making their rounds of calls, with some even making a beeline for the BJP headquarters and the offices of ministers to seek favourable postings or stall the unfavourable ones, party sources said.

Sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party told IANS that the officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Delhi Police and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) have begun visiting offices of ministers and senior party officials to lobby for themselves or their relatives and friends.

Some of them have even orally requested BJP leaders for good postings, the sources added. With a new government taking charge, transfers and postings in the central government departments and offices are widely expected.

Reliable sources in the Delhi Police said officers of the ranks of Joint Commissioner of Police (JCP) and Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) have also started making the rounds of the party headquarters at 11 Ashoka Road in central Delhi. A few officials from the CBI and the IRS (Indian Revenue Service) have also visited senior BJP leaders to get favourable job positions.

This IANS correspondent was witness to a senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer coming to meet a BJP bigwig seeking his intervention in the annulment of a transfer order out of Delhi.

The sources said that some of the officers of the paramilitary forces have also approached the office of Home Minister Rajnath Singh in the hope of being in his "good books."

Sources said that during the NDA regime (1998-2004), a lot of cadre reshuffle took place in the central government. In fact in 1999, the NDA government inducted an Uttar Pradesh cadre IPS officer into the UGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories) cadre and promoted him as Delhi's police commissioner.

Hoping for a return of the same situation, a lot of officers have started fishing around for better prospects. Every government tries to get civil servants and police officers who are considered close to their thinking and move out those who may not ideologically be in line with their philosophy.

(Alok Singh can be contacted at alok.s@ians.in)