Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba likely to be appointed Cabinet Secretary for Narendra Modi's second term

Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba is likely to be appointed as the next Cabinet Secretary, replacing PK Sinha, whose four-year tenure comes to an end in June. Reports indicated that the 1982 batch Jharkhand cadre IAS officer will be the Cabinet Secretary in Narendra Modi’s second term as the prime minister. The Cabinet Secretary post is the highest post in the country’s bureaucracy. Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir, BVR Subrahmanyam, a 1987 batch IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre, is reportedly the next choice for the post after Gauba. Gauba, who has served in various capacities in the Central government as well as in Jharkhand and Bihar governments, is supposed to complete his two-year tenure as home secretary on 31 August. As Cabinet Secretary, Gauba would be in office for a fixed tenure of two years, but it can be extendable to two more years, like in the case of Sinha. [caption id=“attachment_6714481” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba. PTI[/caption] Sinha, incumbent Cabinet Secretary, was first appointed in 2015 for two years. He got an year extension of service in 2017 and again another year in 2018. Both the predecessors of Sinha — Ajit Kumar Seth and KM Chandrasekhar  — had also served the post for four years. As per government rules, no government servant shall be granted extension in service beyond the age of retirement of 60 years but as per rule FR 56, extension in public interest may be given “for a period not exceeding four years in the case of Cabinet Secretary”. If Gauba’s name is cleared by the Appointment Committee of Cabinet in the new government after it assumes charge on 30 May, he will first be appointed as Officer on Special Duty, sometime in the first week of June before taking over the charge from Sinha, PTI quoted a government official as saying. Who is Rajiv Gauba? Rajiv Gauba joined the Ministry of Home Affairs as the Officer on Special Duty in June 2017, before taking charge as the Union Home Secretary after the retirement of Rajiv Mehrishi. As a 1982 batch IAS officer of the Jharkhand cadre, he has served in the Home Ministry as the joint and additional secretary. Gauba has handled internal security, which included militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East and the Maoist insurgency in the central and eastern states. He has also been part of the central government’s ministries of Defence, Finance, Environment and Forests, and the Department of Electronic and Information Technology. “Gauba has represented India on the board of International Monetary Fund for four years. In Bihar, Gauba served as collector and district magistrate for 7 years in Gaya, Nalanda and Muzaffarpur,” Financial Express reported. In 2016, Gauba was appointed as Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Urban Development. He was preceded by Madhusudhan Prasad. He has also served as chief secretary of Jharkhand, Resident Commissioner of Jharkhand in Delhi. Before bifurcation of Bihar, Gauba had also served as district magistrate of Gaya, Nalanda and Muzaffarpur districts. Gauba had also served as private secretary to the then defence minister George Fernandes in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. With inputs from agencies