Punjab: Anurag Verma To Be The New Chief Secretary, Set To Replace VK Janjua

Verma will take charge on July 1, following VK Janjua's retirement on June 30. 

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

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The Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab on Monday appointed Anurag Verma as the new chief secretary replacing Vijay Kumar Janjua. Anurag Verma, a 1993-batch IAS officer, was serving as additional Chief Secretary, Home Affairs and Department of Personnel and Vigilance.

Verma will take charge on July 1, following VK Janjua's retirement on June 30. 

"Consequent upon implementation of these orders, Shri Anirudh Tewari, IAS (1990); Shri Anurag Agarwal, IAS (1990); Shri A. Venu Prasad, IAS (1991); Smt. Seema Jain, IAS (1991); Shri Sarvjit Singh, IAS (1992); Smt. Raji P. Shrivastava, IAS (1992) and Shri KAP Sinha, IAS (1992) shall be designated as Special Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab," reads the official order. 

"The charge of the posts falling vacant as a result of this order will be given later on," the order further reads.  

Janjua, who holds a B Tech in electronics from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, formerly worked at SCL Mohali, a Government of India firm that designed computer chips for space agencies. He passed the Civil Services Exam in 1998 and was assigned to the IRS (Income Tax) and thereafter to the IAS in 1989 with an All India rank of 12 and was assigned to the Punjab Cadre, according to Indian Express's report.

Janjua had worked in a variety of governmental agencies, including rural development, industry, labour, and animal husbandry. During Janjua's term as deputy commissioner of Fatehgarh Sahib district, he collaborated with the National Informatics Centre to create PRISM software and implement computerised property registration in Punjab. 

Janjua was also responsible in enacting various labour law reforms to improve the ease of doing business in Punjab, as well as the state's investment climate. The threshold limit that requires prior permission before retrenchment or laying off a worker has been raised from 100 to 300. The number of workers in a plant was increased from 20 to 40. The number of additional working hours each quarter has also been raised, Indian Express had reported.