he Bihar government on Tuesday promoted seven IAS officers, including two 1996-batch officers, to the rank of principal secretary and five from the 2005-batch to the rank of secretary.
Chief electoral officer H R Srinivasan and Bihar State Examination Board chairman Anand Kishore have been promoted to the level of principal secretary.
Srinivasan, will continue to serve as the chief electoral officer.
2005-batch IAS officer Manish Kumar, who is special secretary in information and technology department, has been promoted to the secretary grade.
Patna district magistrate Kumar Ravi, Divesh Sehra, managing director of Bihar State SC/ST Cooperative Development, Balamurugan D, commissioner (self-employment) and Radheshyam Shah, special secretary, land and reforms department, have also been promoted to the secretary rank.
The government notification in this regard said the promotions would be effective from January 1, 2021 and the promoted officers would be entitled to the concomitant financial benefits from the date they get the elevated ranks.
Decks have also been cleared for the promotion of 11 IPS officers to the rank of additional DGs (ADGs), inspector general (IGs) and the director general (DG). A big reshuffle in the police brass is in the offing and is likely to take place within a couple of days.
The departmental promotion committee (DPC) comprising chief secretary Deepak Kumar, development commissioner Arun Kumar, home secretary Amir Subhani and director-general of police S K Singhal, which met on Monday evening via video conference, has cleared the file pertaining to the promotions, due for the last few weeks.
They recommended the promotion of 11 IPS officers of 1990, 1996 and 2003 batches, respectively.
The officers whose names have been recommended for promotion include IGs Bachchu Singh Meena (special branch), Sunil Kumar (special secretary, home), Paras Nath (budget, appeal and welfare), Nayyar Hussnain Khan (headquarter), Anil Kishore Yadav (training), Kamal Kishore Singh (State Crime Record Bureau) and Amit Kumar Jain (modernisation).
The DPC has already cleared the names of three DIGs, Vikas Vaibhav (ATS), Vijay Kumar Verma (Saran range) and Suresh Kumar Choudhary (Koshi Range), for promotion to the rank of IG.
ADG Sobha Ohatker has also been promoted to director-general (DG) rank.
Officials familiar with the development said that the recommendations have been sent to chief minister Nitish Kumar. Once approved, the IPS officers would be posted accordingly.
