A little bird from the corridors of the Velagapudi secretariat tells South First that former Telangana chief secretary Somesh Kumar has not received any “concrete assurance” from Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy about being accommodated in a “respectable post” commensurate with his seniority.
Although it’s not immediately known what Somesh Kumar had sought from Jagan, the latter is not believed to have responded positively.
The little bird also said that Chief Minister Jagan is constrained by the fact that there are at present no posts vacant in Andhra Pradesh that would suit Somesh Kumar’s “stature”. He would have to create something out of thin air to accommodate Somesh Kumar.
The question, however, is: Why would Jagan go out of his way to do so?
Thus the suspense over Somesh Kumar’s next posting continues even a week after the Telangana High Court quashed a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order that allowed him to stay on in Telangana, even though he was assigned to the Andhra Pradesh cadre after the bifurcation of the state in 2014.
Related: HC order Telangana chief secretary back to Andhra cadre
And the court refused to keep the order in abeyance till he filed an appeal. The Centre, too, showed immense alacrity in issuing him orders to report to his home cadre in just two days.
Somesh Kumar, who is said to be close to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, adhered to the order and reported to his junior by a year, Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy, on the assigned day, 12 January.
But after his meeting with Jagan, the senior bureaucrat flew right back to Hyderabad and has been cooling his heels in the city where he was master of all he surveyed just over a week ago.
