Having assumed his office on December 13, 2023 Dr Yadav handpicked Raghvendra Singh to lead his secretariat. Later, additional chief secretary Dr Rajesh Rajora was brought in the CMO. Soon after, Raghvendra Singh was shifted to Revenue department during the first major CMO rejig.
Bhopal: Frequent bureaucratic reshuffles in his first two years of office, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Dr Mohan Yadav seems to be still looking for the right man in the right place.
Just six months away from half his term the moot question haunting the CM must be if he has done enough to consolidate his position in his office and if it is enough to silence his critics within and outside the Bharatiya Janata Party as he had been handpicked by the BJP central leadership in 2023, for the coveted chair of CM while ignoring the natural claim of the then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on the chair and also aspirations of several other senior leaders.
Given frequent reshuffles in the CM’s secretariat, directorate of public relations and also other bureaucratic reshuffles there are discussions going on in the bureaucratic as well as political circles as to what sort of performance CM expects of the officials to show and why there are frequent reshuffles without giving much time to officials to understand and discharge their duties in a bid to live up to the CM’s expectations.
Having assumed his office on December 13, 2023 Dr Yadav handpicked Raghvendra Singh to lead his secretariat. Later, additional chief secretary (ACS) Dr Rajesh Rajora was brought in the chief minister office (CMO). Soon after, Raghvendra Singh was shifted to Revenue department during the first major CMO rejig.
Sanjay Kumar Shukla was appointed as the principal secretary in the CM secretariat in the second week of June, 2024 but within six months of his tenure he was shifted to urban development department.
Sandeep Yadav who was the second commissioner, Public Relations (CPR) handpicked by Dr Yadav after Vivek Porwal’s very short stint was shifted to the health department as the secretary.
Later, Bharat Yadav was appointed in the CM secretariat from where he was transferred later while Dr Rajora was shifted to Public Health Engineering as its additional chief secretary.
Dr Rajora was replaced by ACS Neeraj Mandloi who is heading the bureaucratic set up at the CMO since July 2025.
Several other IAS officers were brought in the CMO on different positions and later transferred from there.
Dr Mohan Yadav took oath of office as Chief Minister on December 13, 2023, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Interestingly, in a goof-up, the chief minister office’s order issued in February 2024 included Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) chairman as well in terminating appointment of as many as 45 chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of various state run boards, corporations and authorities with immediate affect.
These dignitaries, mostly politicians from the ruling party, were appointed by the then Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
Though this move was seen as one aimed at restructuring the administration, the goof-up in it was that RERA chairperson whose position is statutory one designated for five years’ term too was sacked from his position as per the order that he instantly challenged in the court whereas legally the government was not in a position to terminate his services given statutory position of his office until and unless there were corruption charges proved against him and under certain other conditions.
Much to further embarrassment of the state government RERA chief AP Shrivastava won the legal battle in the Supreme Court.
Directorate of Public Relations tasked with reaching out to people with publicity of government’s schemes and policies and build the CM’s image has had five commissioners so far since Dr Yadav assumed office.
Vivek Porwal was the first commissioner handpicked by Dr Mohan Yadav to replace the then CPR Manish Singh who had been appointed in the directorate to undertake a number of measures in a bid to abridge the growing gap between the media and the directorate.
Within a period of ten days Vivek Porwal was replaced with Sandeep Yadav. The latter’s shifting to the CM secretariat led to arrival of Sudam Khade as the commissioner. Khade had been the commissioner, Public Relations during the then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s fourth term as well.
In September this year, Sudam Khade was replaced with Deepak Saxena who held the position of collector, Jabalpur prior to his appointment. Roshan Kumar Singh who was director at the DPR to assist Sandeep Yadav was shifted to Ujjain as collector in September this year.
The directorate saw a major face-off between the directorate officials, employees and the government recently when the officials went on a strike to protest appointment of a state administrative officer as the additional director over there.
The frequent shifting of officials at key positions in the government particularly that of IAS and IPS officers has created doubt in the mind of bureaucracy as to what the chief minister expects of the bureaucracy to do, said a government official.
The officer wanting not to be named said stability in key positions is a major factor behind any government’s success in implementing its policies and schemes and strengthening its position as was witnessed during the then Shivraj Singh Chouhan government. He trusted certain officers and it paid off. Frequent transfers affected morale of officers and created doubt in their mind which was not good for functioning of the government.
A government official claimed several IAS officers were looking for their posting in the central government. This is also not a good sign for the government. The CM needed to sit with the senior bureaucrats and listen to them to understand what is going on in bureaucracy and what he can do to bring in stability factor in the administration.
Frequent changes have not gone down well with the government departments as well as far as functioning of the departments are concerned.
A minister wanting not to be quoted asked how a department was expected to perform well when there were frequent changes on key positions.
“Before they understand the department’s functioning and start implementing the schemes they are shifted to other places”, he added.
As per an estimate, approximately 300 IAS and 150-200 IPS officers were shifted from their positions in the past two years.
