A senior IAS officer, Puneet Yadav who is set to be the Joint Secretary in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has taken an unusual route to seek Central deputation – requesting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Facebook – not once but twice. His appointment under the Central Staffing Scheme will be for a period of five years.
Yadav is a 1999-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of West Bengal cadre. In April he tool to Facebook twice in three days to impress upon Mamata Banerjee government to allow him to proceed on Central deputation.
Puneet Yadav, currently serving as a secretary in the Bengal finance department at state secretariat Nabanna, resorted to the rather unusual approach as his aged father is keeping ill for some time now at their house in Agra, and he needs to be there to look after him.
Making Plea to Mamata Banerjee on Facebook
The 1999 batch IAS officer first took to Facebook on 1 April, disclosing in two posts that he has applied to the state government to allow him take up Central deputation and asking friends to “pray” for his early movement to Delhi.
But with no positive outcome being facilitated by the Facebook posts on the first day of the week yesterday, Yadav wrote on FB again. This time he uploaded a rather long post running into 814 words narrating how his father brought him up under immense hardships and how he was now suffering due to ailments at the age of “78- 80 years.”
The IAS officer’s desperation was evident in the way he concluded the post – “I have done full justice to my job in most demanding situations but I can’t absolve myself of my responsibilities as a son only because I am a government servant.”
His first post had invited 558 comments and the second one drew even more comments, all sympathising with his cause and praying that Mamata Banerjee government listens to his appeal at the earliest. However, it took WB Govt almost six months to accede to his request because WB has a dearth of IAS officers. This is why Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has placed a blanket ban on allowing any civil servant to go on Central deputation.
Yadav is an alumnus of St. Peter’s College Agra. He did B-Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He also did a Management in Finance & Accounting from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and an MBA in Finance & Marketing from Indian School of Business.
He has held various important positions in the state government of West Bengal which includes Joint Chief Electoral Officer, Managing Director of West Bengal Medical Services Corporation Limited, Additional Secretary & Secretary in Finance Department and District Magistrate of Darjeeling among others. He has hands-on experience in state-wide policy preparation, planning and implementation of departmental schemes, election matters and healthcare.
