More babus join private party

MUMBAI: After a dozen senior bureaucrats left their cushy jobs with the Maharashtra state government to join Reliance’s SEZ, another group of top IAS officials is on their way out.

Former Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) chief and state energy secretary Jayant Kawale and Prabhakar Karandikar, former head of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), are both joining the Mahindra Group infrastructure development division. The Mahindras have a slew of companies in the infrastructure domain.

Sonia Sethi, joint managing director of CIDCO, recently went on leave to take up an assignment with an NGO-public private partnership initiative. Former Mumbai collector, Mahesh Pathak, too joined the Mumbai International Airport as officer on special duty, for a period of three years. Earlier this year, Sudha Bhave, A Ramakrishnan and Rajiv Sinha, all IAS officers, had left their government jobs to join the private sector.

As reported by ET on April 6, the Maharashtra government has been facing a steady exodus of senior officials. It was first noticed when a large number of senior officials from the revenue ministry migrated to Reliance’s SEZ venture. Setting the trend was Ajit Warty, former principal secretary to chief minister Manohar Joshi during the Sena-BJP’s rule.

Unlike Mr Warty, who joined a private company after retirement, others left the job and changed the course of their career. Senior IAS officials have also recently taken leave to experiment with private sector.

Under the Indian Administrative Service (cadre) rules, an IAS officer can take up a job with an international organisation, an autonomous entity not controlled by the government or a private body for three years and can come back to serve the government. “We will be back in the government eventually,” Mr Kawale and
Mr Karandikar said.