IAS officers and the notorious transfer culture

A data interactive that shows which states and departments transfer their IAS officers the most and which ones the least

Imagine changing your job every year. That’s what the average IAS officer in Haryana, Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh does. Haryana is the worst. An IAS officer belonging to that cadre and having 10 years of service, on average, spent just 343 days in a posting. Their peers at the Centre are better, but still far short of the average standards of job tenures, especially in the context of good governance and continuity: they spend, on average, 22 months in a posting.
The data interactive below has compiled the transfer records of 39,000-odd postings of about 2,600 serving officers, as posted by the Department of Personnel & Training. You can use it to see where the Centre and individual states, whose IAS officers are organised under 26 cadres, stand when it comes to transfers. Besides cadre, you can also search by departments, gender and individual officers.
The transfer malaise is all-pervasive. For example, it illustrates, how 10% of postings in 20 key departments in the state cadres (excluding Centre), last anywhere between 33 days and 71 days. Or, how 22% of IAS officers average less than a year in a posting. Or, how Ashok Khemka, who has been transferred by governments in Haryana 46 times in his 25-year career, is only one of the 11 officers to record 40-plus postings.

Haryana is the most transfer-happy state for IAS officers

IAS officers from the Haryana cadre stay, on average, just 11 months in a posting. Their peers at the Centre spend an equally mortifying 22 months. Other states slot into the space in between.
Use this dashboard to see and compare transfer records of serving IAS officers by states, departments, gender and officer.

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Search by Cadre

Cadre

Department

Gender

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Search by Name

Average tenure (days)

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Average tenure (days)

Longest & shortest tenures: Departments/states

Rank	Dept/State	Duration (days)
1	Petroleum & natural gas	656
2	Defence	607
3	Commerce	601
4	Textiles	571
5	Chemicals & fertilizers	555

Rank	Dept/State	Duration (days)
40	Development of northeast	319
39	Parliamentary affairs	347
38	Labour & employment	364
37	Youth affairs & sports	374
36	Public administration	378

Distribution of officers by avg. tenures

Longest and shortest tenures:
Officers

Rank	Person	Duration (days)
1	Hage Bhatt	1312
2	Tseten Dorji	1058
3	Sowjanya	1022
4	Ved Prakash Rao	991
5	Kaling Tayeng	973

Rank	Person	Duration (days)
2371	S.T. Anjan Kumar	89
2370	Rajeev Sharma	114
2369	Sandeep Bhatnagar	122
2368	N. Jayaram	125
2367	Basant Garg	130

Note:

1. Data as of December 20, 2015
2. AGMUT represents Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and all union territories
3. Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014 and IAS officers assigned to it. Since their records don’t amply demonstrate Telangana’s approach to transfers, they have been excluded from this study
4. For this study, we have taken IAS officers who entered service before 2005. Since we wanted to study patterns of transfers, we set the cut-off at 10 years of service.

Data source: Department of Personnel & Training

Supreme Court’s tax bench is back

The return of the bench can also be part of chief justice T.S. Thakur’s drive to reduce pendency in the top court 

 The Supreme Court’s tax bench, dedicated to hearing tax-related issues, is back.

The bench comprising justices A.K. Sikri and Rohinton F. Nariman was introduced during the tenure of chief justice H.L. Dattu last year to ensure quick disposal of tax cases.
After taking a small hiatus of two months after chief justice T.S. Thakur took over in December last year, the bench has been sitting on Mondays and Fridays at 2pm since 4 March.
“I guess it’s back by popular demand! I don’t know the exact reasons of course but given how happy the Bar was with the functioning of the Tax Bench, I suppose that may have been a factor in its restoration,” said Alok Prasanna Kumar, senior resident fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
In an analysis for Mint , Kumar wrote that this bench delivered 197 judgments in 2015, roughly the same number as was done in the three years before 2015 (206 judgments). A total of 518 connected cases were disposed of through these judgments and various orders.
The tax bench was largely considered to be successful at the time, and it was hoped that even after Dattu’s retirement, the bench would continue.
Lawyer Balbir Singh reportedly said, “I hope the new Chief (Justice of India) will also come up with some plan like this and can form a separate bench to focus just on direct tax this time.”
The return of the bench can also be part of CJI Thakur’s drive to reduce pendency in the top court. It was one of the promises he made as he began his tenure. In order to bring down the number of pending cases, in January, Thakur set up constitution benches and three-judge benches to hear cases every Monday and Friday.
Sunil Jain, tax partner at law firm J. Sagar Associates, welcomed the move. “Of course, a dedicated bench is very good. It will look at disposing cases faster, especially since there are a large number of pending cases,” he said.
However, Jain noted that the apex court as such has to be credited with handling varied laws and unraveling complex legal issues.
“But even before this bench (was formed), you cannot fault a very large number of judgments of the Supreme Court,” Jain said, adding, “Personally, I am enamoured by their skill. All Supreme Court judges are seasoned jurists who end up looking at various kinds of laws every day. They have a very mature reading of the law and disentangle for us very diverse laws.”
Why the tax bench is back is anybody’s guess, but it certainly speaks of the competence of the judges who have been assigned the task.
“Universal opinion was that we had two very good judges who delivered very clear judgements on the law,” Kumar said.
Lawyer Harish Salve also agreed. In the February report referred above, he said, “Tax is a specialist field and terse judgments to the point are always better precedents. General comments in long judgements create problems. This bench was superb in their grasp and in their judgements.”
The bench decided issues regarding whether tax liability would pass on to the legal heirs of an assessee who died (no for indirect taxes, yes for direct taxes), on excise valuation and anti-dumping duties.