Andhra sees another reshuffle of officials: 22 IPS officers transferred

The Andhra Pradesh government on Sunday continued its exercise of a bureacratic reshuffle as 22 IPS officers in the state were transferred.

In a Government Order (GO) issued by Chief Secretary L V Subrahmanyam, the state said that Visakhapatnam city police commissioner Mahesh Chandra Laddha, from the 1998-batch, has been shifted and replaced with Rajiv Kumar Meena, from the 1995-batch. 

Mahesh has now been posted as Inspector General of Police (Personnel) at the state headquarters.

DGP rank IPS officer A R Anuradha from the 1987 batch, who was the former Principal Secretary (Home) has now been posted as Director General of AP State Disaster Response and Fire Services.

Additional DG-rank officer N Balasubrahmanyam, who is presently CEO e-Pragati, has been asked to report to the General Administration Department for further posting, while N Sridhar Rao, also from the same batch, was posted as Additional DG (Welfare and Sports).

1998-batch officer K Satyanarayana was posted as IG, Police Transport Oganisation while Vineet Brijlal, from the 2001-batch was posted as IGP, Guntur Range.

This is the third major reshuffle in the span of less than one month. Days after he took oath as the Chief Minister, Jagan Mohan Reddy had transferred 47 officers.

Earlier this week, the state government transferred another 47 officers, including 43 IAS officers and one officer from the IPS, IFS, IRS and IRPS each. 

DIG-rank officer G Srinivas, Superintendent of Police-rank officers G V K Ashok Kumar, Sarvashresta Tripathi, Vikrant Patil and Koya Praveen were transferred in this round yet again but Praveen has been left out without any fresh posting.

Several bureaucrats considered close to previous government of N Chandrababu Naidu were either shunted to insignificant posts or asked to report to General Administration Department for further postings.

Retired IAS officer and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary Ajeya Kallam was also appointed as the Chief Minister's principal advisor and now holds the rank of a cabinet minister. Kallam, who retired as the Chief Secretary in 2017, will be head of the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) and allot the subjects between secretaries of CMO. 

After his retirement, Kallam had come out publicly to criticise Naidu, accusing the former CM of corruption, especially where the construction of capital Amaravati was concerned.