SHILLONG: Meghalaya is facing shortage of IAS officers thereby affecting the overall administration in the state.
There are only 42 IAS officers in the state and out of this, by the end of this year, the state will lose nine officers due to their retirement.
Sources said while many others are on central deputation, several senior officers are camping in Delhi.
Out of the nine officers, those who have already retired are MS Lhuid, Y Tsering (former chief secretary) and W Khyllep.
While additional chief secretary PW Ingty and Commissioner and Secretary WR Lyngdoh will be retiring on May 31, Commissioner and Secretaries Tining Dkhar and PS Dkhar and Chief Secretary PS Thangkhiew will retire by the end of this year. Another additional chief secretary KN Kumar has taken voluntary retirement from May 31.
With the shortage of sufficient manpower, an officer is handling many departments and the number of departments may go upto nine.
An official source admitted that in the absence of many officers, the existing officers will have to share the burden.
The source added that two officers, Shakil Ahmed and Vijay Mantri will return to state shortly after their central deputation.
Four officials from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, BDR Tiwari, Pooja Pandey, Sanjay Goyal and Akash Deep are already on deputation, while Chinmay Gotmare will also be leaving for deputation.
Besides, senior officers like MS Rao, RN Mishra, PK Srivastava and Pankaj Jain are sill posted in Delhi.
The appointment of Meghalaya Civil Service officers is taking a long time and the last batch came out in two phases – in 2010 and 2012 – and there has been no fresh appointment since then.
Out of six to seven new officers under Assam-Meghalaya cadre, Meghalaya get only two officers every year while others are posted in Assam.
An officer from one cadre changes his or her cadre if the spouse is from another cadre.
Though they are supposed to choose a deficit cadre like Meghalaya, many do not follow the rules thereby affecting the strength of IAS officers in the North East.
The last 2016 batch officer from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre appointed in Meghalaya is Ramakrishna Chitturi.
