PC aide shunted out from Finance Ministry

The Centre on Tuesday continued with the reshuffle of the top bureaucracy by shunting out K P Krishnan, a senior Karnataka cadre IAS officer considered close to P Chidambaram, from the Finance Ministry, while assigning new tasks to 10 others.

 A 1983-batch officer, Krishnan was transferred to Rural Development Ministry's Department of Land Resources as its Additional Secretary in place of Prabhu Dayal Meena, who is a 1980-batch officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre.

 Krishnan, who enjoyed the confidence of Chidambaram when he was finance minister in the previous UPA regime, was director-general and additional secretary of Directorate of Currency in Department of Economic Affairs.

 Ajay Tyagi, a Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS officer of the 1984 batch who was joint secretary in the Ministry of Environment, will replace him.

 Krishnan’s transfer comes amid a reshuffle in the Finance Ministry where Arvind Mayaram was transferred out and Rajiv Mehrishi was brought in as finance secretary ahead of the budget exercise.

The government also appointed Arvind Subramanian as the new chief economic adviser.

 Krishnan was on deputation between September 2005 and September 2012 when he worked as joint secretary in Department of Economic Affairs and later in the Prime Minister's Office in the Economic Advisory wing. For about 10 months from September 2012, he was posted back to the state cadre but he did not leave Delhi as he was given an assignment in Karnataka Bhavan. Again, he came to the Centre on deputation in July last year.

 Recently, former Sebi chief M Damodaran is understood to have complained against Krishnan.

 In other appointments, Kewal Kumar Sharma, a 1983-batch IAS officer, was posted as additional secretary in the Women and Child Development Ministry, while B N Satpathy, an IES officer of 1980 batch, has been appointed as adviser in the inter-state council secretariat in the rank and pay of additional secretary.