GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 4th Aug. A government order was issued hours after the Central government relaxed key rules to provide Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba a one-year extension beyond August 30, 2023. Rajiv Gauba is now the cabinet secretary with the most years of service.
A government order said, “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved extension in service to Shri Rajiv Gauba as Cabinet Secretary for a further period of one year beyond 30.08.2023, in relaxation of AIS (DCRB) Rules, 1958 and Rule 56(d) of the Fundamental Rules.”
BD Pande was the longest-standing cabinet secretary before Rajiv Gauba, lasting from November 2, 1972, to March 31, 1977.
Rajiv Gauba, a 1982-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Jharkhand cadre and a former Union home secretary, was appointed to the country’s top bureaucratic position in 2019, with a two-year tenure. He was then given two extensions, the first in 2021 and the second in August of the following year.
The rules allow the Central Government to give a cabinet secretary an extension of service in the public interest, “provided that the total term of the cabinet secretary who is granted such extensions of service does not exceed four years.”
The new extension will allow Rajiv Gauba to remain in office till the general elections due early next year.
Rajiv Gauba is credited as the primary architect of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. This act led to the division of the erstwhile state into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, following the abrogation of the special status accorded to the region under Article 370 of the Constitution.
He had also worked as a secretary in the Union Urban Development Ministry and as an additional secretary in the Home Ministry, where he was in charge of the crucial left-wing extremism division, among other duties.
Gauba was born in Punjab and graduated from Patna University with a degree in Physics. He was the chief secretary of Jharkhand for 15 months before returning to the central government in 2016.
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