By Kavita Mistry 
Hyderabad: Two Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers in Andhra Pradesh, including the senior-most in the state cadre, have been waiting for a posting for over a year since the Chandrababu Naidu-led NDA government came to power.
Yerra Srilakshmi, a 1988 batch officer, was the Municipal Administration and Urban Development special chief secretary under the previous Jagan Mohan Reddy administration. Attached to the General Administration Department days after the power transfer, she has been awaiting a posting since 20 June last year.
The other officer is Muralidhar Reddy, a 2006 batch officer and a promotee from the state civil service. He served as the vice chairman and managing director of Andhra Pradesh Medical Services & Infrastructure Development Corporation (APMSIDC), and chief executive officer of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), before being shunted out.
“It’s been too long a wait, sitting idle and every day expecting a call, message, or orders to take charge of some position in the government,” one of the two IAS officers told ThePrint. “In such a situation, what can I do except resign to my fate?”
While the two officers remain in anxious wait, two IAS officers who retired Monday were reposted in their same positions as ex-officio secretaries by the Naidu administration.
Hari Jawaharlal has assumed charge as ex-officio secretary to the Governor in the Andhra Pradesh Raj Bhavan Tuesday, following orders issued by the government. The other officer who also got a one-year extension is S. Satyanarayana, posted again as ex-officio secretary of the Backward Classes welfare department.
The number of officers awaiting reassignment was much higher a year ago, with around a dozen IAS and two dozen IPS officers kept without postings.
The reason was a strong perception that most of these officers were close to former CM Jagan Mohan Reddy and other senior YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) leaders, and allegedly functioned according to the previous government’s diktats, regardless of rules and procedures.
“Yes, the number was very high, but we gradually brought it down, assigning some task or the other to the waiting IAS officers,” a top Andhra Pradesh government official told ThePrint, declining to comment on why the two officers were still on the bench.
Sources said that there is no probe—vigilance, departmental or otherwise—against Reddy, for the government to justify keeping him attached to the GAD.
While the CM is said to be disinclined to rehabilitate Srilakshmi anytime soon, the reasons for keeping Reddy without a posting are not known, said one officer. The former has one year left in service, while the latter will retire in 2029.
A Jana Sena leader said that Srilakshmi had unsuccessfully sought Pawan Kalyan’s intervention to secure a posting.
Srilakshmi has been a prominent figure in Andhra Pradesh’s bureaucratic and political circles. She is one of the IAS officers accused in Jagan’s disproportionate assets case, allegedly accumulated through quid pro quo favours when Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister of the combined Andhra Pradesh.
The CBI in its chargesheet had accused Srilakshmi, as secretary of industries and commerce between 2007 and 2009, of misusing her office to grant mining leases to firms of former Karnataka minister G. Janardhana Reddy and others.
She was arrested in November 2011 and lodged in a Hyderabad jail till October 2012. However, Srilakshmi was acquitted by the Telangana High Court, which in 2022 quashed the charges against her.
In December 2020, Jagan appointed her as the secretary of MAUD. She later served as principal secretary and special chief secretary in the same department.
TDP (Telugu Desam Party) leaders accuse Srilakshmi of aiding Jagan to destroy the Amaravati capital project during YSRCP’s tenure. P. Narayana, who again took charge as MAUD minister in June, reportedly snubbed Srilakshmi when she took a file to him to sign, saying, “What’s the hurry?”
She was the special chief secretary of MAUD until 19 June, when Naidu sent her into the waiting room. Srilakshmi is also accused of using public funds to build a memorial park in her father’s name at Machilipatnam.
The Obulapuram illegal mining case came back to trouble Srilakshmi again in May this year, with the Supreme Court setting aside the high court’s 2022 discharge order.
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IPS officers in limbo
Meanwhile, the wait for posting has been long for four IPS officers, too, three of them Reddys.
Kolli Raghuram Reddy (IPS 2006) and Rishanth Reddy (IPS 2016) have been waiting since June last year. Ravishankar Reddy (IPS 2013) and P. Joshua (IPS 2016), who were relieved during the state elections, remain without postings. The latter two are promotees from the state police service.
Over the last year, five IPS officers, while waiting for postings, were put under suspension, including a DGP rank officer, P.S.R. Anjaneyulu from the 1992 IPS batch.
Anjaneyulu, the intelligence chief during Jagan’s tenure, was arrested earlier this year and remanded in connection with two cases—Mumbai actor Kadambari Jethwani’s harassment case and the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) exams and evaluation scam.
Kanthi Rana Tata and Vishal Gunni were also suspended in September as part of disciplinary action in connection with their involvement in the Jethwani case.
Former Andhra Pradesh CID chief P.V. Sunil Kumar, from the 1993 IPS batch, was suspended in March for allegedly making unauthorised foreign visits in violation of the All India Services officers’ conduct rules.
N. Sanjay was suspended in December on allegations of misappropriation of public funds during his tenure as director general of Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Response and Fire Services. The senior officer was also accused of irregularities while serving as the additional DGP of the Andhra Pradesh CID.
Sanjay was the CID chief when the agency arrested Naidu in September 2023 in the alleged Rs 371 crore skill development project scam.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)