An IAS officer of 1986 batch Manukumar Srivastava on Monday took over as the new Chief Secretary of Maharashtra from the outgoing CS Debashish Chakrabarty. He got term till April 2023.
His appointment was cleared after the meeting between the Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in the morning. A senior minister told the Free Press Journal, ‘’ The Chief Minister has clearly given priority to seniority in the selection of Srivastava as the new CS. The other contenders were the additional chief secretary (finance and public work departments) Manoj Saunik from 1987 IAS batch and additional chief secretary (revenue) Nitin Kareer from 1988 IAS batch. Since the Maha Vikas Aghadi government took over, Chief Minister has always applied seniority criteria in the appointment of Chief Secretary.’’ He recalled that after the retirement of Ajoy Mehta, the senior most IAS officer Sanjay Kumar of 1983 IAS batch took over and after his superannuation IAS officer of 1985 batch Sitaram Kunte assumed the charge of the Chief Secretary.
Similarly, after Kunte’s term expired on November 30, 2021, Thackeray selected Chakrabarty who was the senior most. Initially, the state government gave Chakrabarty the additional charge of the Chief Secretary but his charge was regularised from retrospective effect through the recent order.
Free Press Journal broke the story last week that Srivastava and Saunik were the two leading contenders for the CS post and the government will go by the seniority criteria.
Srivastava’s appointment came ahead of the commencement of three week budget session starting from March 3 in Mumbai. The budget will be presented on March 11. Srivastava was the additional chief secretary (Home) before his appointment.
