Neerabh Kumar Prasad, an IAS officer of 1987 batch, took over as the Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday. He will hold the post till further orders. Prasad was earlier posted as the Chief Commissioner of Land Administration.
The former Chief Secretary, L V Subrahmanyam, was issued transfer orders on Monday. The controversial move came following a tiff between Chief Minister's Office officials and Subramanyam.
Subrahmanyam was involved in a spat with Praveen Prakash, Principal Secretary (Political) of the General Administration Department, who issued the transfer order. Subrahmanyam had served a show-cause notice to Praveen Prakash for including certain topics in the cabinet meeting held on October 30, without following due procedure.
Subrahmanyam has been posted as the Director General of Human Resources Development Institute, which is considered a relatively unimportant position. Subrahmanyam belongs to the 1983 batch, which will retire after five months.
His transfer also came amid reports of his differences with Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on various issues. Subrahmanyam had been appointed the Chief Secretary by the Election Commission after shunting out A C Punetha on the eve of the elections in April.
After coming to power in May, Jagan Mohan Reddy allowed Subrahmanyam to continue. However, differences are said to have cropped between them. Rumours have been doing the rounds that jagan was unhappy with Subrahmanyam for announcing during his visit to Tirupati that non-Hindu employees of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) and other temples would be asked to quit.BJP leader Lanka Dinakar alleged that Subrahmanyam was punished for trying to protect the sanctity of Tirumala temple.
The situation aggravated when the Chief Secretary last week issued a show-cause notice to Praveen Prakash, a senior officer handpicked by the Chief Minister.
IANS inputs