Senior IAS Officer Santhi Kumari Appointed As Chief Secretary of Telangana

The order was given a day after the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) sent incumbent Somesh Kumar to Andhra Pradesh following the Telangana High Court order.

Senior IAS officer A. Santhi Kumari has been appointed as the new Chief Secretary of Telangana. After Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao approved her appointment to the top administrative position in the state, the state government issued orders designating her as the Chief Secretary. The order was given a day after the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) sent incumbent Somesh Kumar to Andhra Pradesh following the Telangana High Court order.

Santhi Kumari, a 1989 batch officer, is the first woman to be Chief Secretary of Telangana. She is a postgraduate in Marine Biology, studied for an MBA in the United States, and worked for two years in United Nations programs. She served in various positions in the departments of poverty alleviation, education, health, skill development, and forestry over the past three decades of her service.

Santhi Kumari's appointment came a day after the DoPT relieved Somesh Kumar from the Telangana government, following the Telangana High Court set aside the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), allocating the officer to Telangana in 2016.
The DoPT asked Somesh Kumar to join the Andhra Pradesh government by January 12.

On March 29, 2016, the CAT's Hyderabad bench issued an order allocating Somesh Kumar to Telangana.

Following the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh into two separate states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, the Union government reassigned IAS and IPS officers working in the undivided state to the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and the newly-created Telangana.

In this process, Somesh Kumar, an IAS officer from the 1989 batch, was allotted to Andhra Pradesh by the DoPT.

However, Somesh Kumar had moved the CAT and secured an order staying his allotment to the Andhra Pradesh cadre. Since then, he has continued in Telangana and became Chief Secretary in 2019.

The DoPT had filed an appeal in the High Court challenging the stay order of the CAT, Hyderabad branch.

(With IANS Inputs)