Telangana | Mandarins in a not so merry go round
Revanth's dizzying transfer sprees keep his IAS cadre in a permanent tizzy
As he went on-field with jersey no. 9 last December, pairing off with Lionel Messi for a gala event, few may have realised CM Revanth Reddy possesses the master’s dribbling and passing genius on another front. Ask Telangana’s bureaucrats, who have the disconcerting experience of being turned into the football. Match stats? In less than a year, Hyderabad district has seen three collectors. Several other districts, too, are as disoriented with frequent transfers of administrative heads.
As he went on-field with jersey no. 9 last December, pairing off with Lionel Messi for a gala event, few may have realised CM Revanth Reddy possesses the master’s dribbling and passing genius on another front. Ask Telangana’s bureaucrats, who have the disconcerting experience of being turned into the football. Match stats? In less than a year, Hyderabad district has seen three collectors. Several other districts, too, are as disoriented with frequent transfers of administrative heads.
Pending files? Local issues? Rollout of schemes? The buck needs to stop somewhere. But Telangana’s bureaucrats are kept buzzing along a dizzying web of hypermobility. Take the ferris-wheel 2017-batch Telangana cadre IAS officer Prateek Jain has been on. Made the Vikarabad collector and DM in 2024, he was transferred to Narayanpet in February. In just two months, by April end, he was moved again as Sangareddy collector.
KNOCK, KNOCK... WHO’S THERE
The public gets no time to adjust. “Before collectors comprehend the local tenant farmers’ problems or rural distress cases that we take to their notice, he or she is getting transferred,” says Kondala Reddy of Rythu Swarajya Vedika, a farmers’ welfare NGO. “Before a revisit, we are nowadays checking to see if the collector we have met a month or two ago is still posted in the same district.”
The instability permeates the top tiers too. The new, Indo-Saracenic-style state secretariat near the Hussain Sagar lake may exude a mock-imperial calm outside. Inside, though, officers at the principal secretary level and further up—all of whom helm key sectors—find their perches fairly precarious. Name boards outside its chambers need frequent refitting. The administrative sphere, say insiders, is in suspended, if heightened animation.
Sanjay Kumar (special chief secretary rank) has had the same lateral mobility as Collector Jain. Last May, he was with industries, commerce and IT & electronics, transferred from labour and employment. In the February reshuffle that saw 45 officers spun around, he was posted to panchayati raj and rural development. Then, his name featured again among the 30 officers transferred in April, including seven collectors. Now, he’s ensconsed as Special Officer, Telangana Bhavan, New Delhi. Perhaps he fancies the idea of settling down for a bit, but it’s a risky bet.
Retired babus say Revanth’s dribbling skills keeps the steel frame in a tizzy, with 4-5 transfers and average tenures of 6-8 months the norm since he arrived in 2023. It’s taken a toll on officers’ self-confidence, says former finance minister Harish Rao. IAS officers india today spoke to, universally in anguish, say it harms the state too. “This is bad cadre management, to say the least,” says one. “Even as we settle in and try to do something good, we are receiving marching orders. I am afraid I am losing the zeal.” Another fears it might reflect badly on their CV during central deputation. “How shall we explain such repeated transfers?”
Revanth’s first mass transfer, in December 2023, had an understandable trigger: as a Congress CM, he needed to shunt out officers close to the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) regime. But over half a dozen mass transfers have ensued, besides smaller ones. BRS leaders say CM Revanth has effected 200-odd transfers till now, in a moderate-sized pool of around 170 IAS officers. Khammam has seen three collectors in under two years—allegedly owing to pulls exerted by three prominent ministers from the district.
On his part, the CM has expressed public dissatisfaction with the functioning of some officers—chiding them for avoiding field work, inspections, hindering file movement et al. With a few, he has even obliquely questioned their integrity. The Congress says the desire is to produce efficiency. The CMO ascribes some transfers to promotions, grade-related postings, repatriation, even requests from the officers on personal and health grounds “that the CM agrees to sympathetically”.
Wheels within wheels? Probably. But too many of those are under babus! And so many moving parts is keeping the Revanth engine a bit too revved up.
