If there has been one thing that the new BJP government in Madhya Pradesh can claim distinction in, it is the speed with which it has been issuing transfer orders for IAS officers. A transfer list has been issued approximately every five days over the past ten months since the new government took office in December last year. This means that no week goes by without some IAS officers being transferred to the state.
In total, 68 transfer orders have been issued in the past ten months. This occurred despite the fact that no transfers could take place for two and a half months due to the model code of conduct during the Lok Sabha election.
Currently, there are 385 IAS officers from the MP cadre working in the state, of which 282 officers have been transferred multiple times. The situation has become so intense that a few officers have been transferred three or even four times since the government formation. Among them are Ms. Smita Bhardwaj (1992-batch IAS officer), Mr. Sanjay Dubey (1993-batch IAS officer), Mr. Manish Rastogi (1994-batch IAS officer), Ms. Deepali Rastogi (1994-batch IAS officer), Mr. Umakant Umrao (1996-batch IAS officer), Mr. Sukhveer Singh (1996-batch IAS officer), Mr. Vivek Porwal (2000-batch IAS officer), and Mr. Navneet Kothari (2001-batch IAS officer). Additionally, many officers are managing multiple departments, which means even more transfers may be on the horizon to balance their workloads.
The most fortunate exceptions to this constant reshuffling have been the Additional Chief Secretary of the Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Mr. Malay Shrivastava (1990-batch IAS officer), and the Principal Secretary of the Tourism and Culture Department, Mr. Sheo Shekhar Shukla (1994-batch IAS officer), who have not been transferred so far. Apart from these two, officers from all other departments have experienced transfers.
