IAS officer missing from foreign assignment resigned

NEW DELHI: A senior IAS officer has been deemed to have resigned from the service after he reportedly failed to return on duty after completion of his foreign assignment.

Prashant, a 1988-batch IAS officer of West Bengal cadre, is deemed to have resigned from the service with immediate effect, an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training ( DoPT) said.

Prashant was on August 18, 2009 appointed as Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist at the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in Washington.

He failed to return after completion of his tenure in 2010.

President Pranab Mukherjee has directed that Prashant is deemed to have resigned from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) under the rule 7 (2) (c) of the all India services (leave) rules, 1955, the DoPT order said.

The rule says, a member of the service shall be deemed to have resigned from the service if he continues foreign service beyond the period approved by the central government.

50-year-old Prashant hails from Bihar. "The government is taking action against officers who are on unauthorised leave," a senior DoPT official said.