At last, YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has shunted his favourite IAS officer Praveen Prakash from the chief minister’s office.
Orders to this effect were issued on Monday. Praveen Prakash has been transferred to New Delhi as a resident commissioner of Andhra Pradesh Bhavan, a loop line post which he had held during the regime of Telugu Desam Party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Interestingly, Praveen Prakash will be relieving his own wife Bhavana Saxena, who had been holding the post of resident commissioner till now.
She has been appointed as joint secretary in the Union ministry of external affairs on central deputation.
It is not immediately known whether Praveen Prakash has been transferred to Delhi on his own request or as part of punishment.
Praveen Prakash, a 1994-batch IAS officer, was brought back to Andhra Pradesh by Jagan soon after the latter came to power in 2019.
He has been serving as the principal secretary in CMO and is dictating terms to all the bureaucrats, even bypassing the orders of chief secretary.
In fact, he was responsible for the abrupt transfer of former chief secretary L V Subrahmanyam.
He also picked up quarrels with several other IAS officers. Later, he was stripped of the post of Principal Secretary (political) and was confined only to the CMO.
Apparently, Jagan has been receiving a lot of complaints from the YSR Congress party MLAs and MPs against Praveen Prakash that he had been rejecting their requisitions for various works in their respective constituencies. Several other IAS officers also reportedly complained to CM against Praveen Prakash.
A couple of years, ago, there were reports that Praveen made an attempt to go on central deputation, but it did not happen.
Later, there were also reports that he would quit his job and enter politics to contest the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh on BJP ticket from Varanasi assembly constituency. But it also did not happen.
Now, he is leaving for Delhi, thereby ending his controversial tenure in AP.
