IAS officers of the 1988 batch had been waiting for long to be empanelled as Secretary Level. It should have been done in December 2019 but for one reason or the other it did not happen. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) clears the name of officers for Secretary Level each year. The Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah comprise the two members of the ACC. Each cadre has approximately 120 candidates each year.
Now the 1988 batch has only 101 officers out of which the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has released a list of 30 officers on April 13, 2020; six are from the 1987 batch and 24 are from the 1988 batch. The lucky cadre is Gujarat, whose five officers out of seven have been empanelled as Secretary / Secretary Equivalent. Arvind Kumar Sharma Additional Secretary and a trusted Lieutenant of the Prime Minister is one of the lucky ones. Another Additional Secretary in the PMO Tarun Bajaj from the Haryana cadre has also been empanelled. Ms. Jyoti Arora, a 1987 batch IAS officer from the Haryana cadre, who is serving as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, also made the list. The DoPT has not touched Telangana, AGMUT, and Rajasthan cadres so far. UP has 11 IAS officers of the 1988 batch but only three officers made it in the first list. All officers are now anxiously waiting for the second list.
