IAS officers ask to be posted in same state as their spouses

They fell in love and got married. But the government will get to decide if and when they live together.

They fell in love and got married. But the government will get to decide if and when they live together.

Nearly a dozen Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers — most of them married to batchmates they met during their training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administrators — have petitioned the government to move them to the same state as their spouse.

Each IAS, IPS and forest service officer is allocated to a state where he spends the rest of his or her career. This time, the department of personnel & training said seven male and six lady IAS officers belonging to 2010-2014 batches had sought a cadre change on grounds of marriage.

Like IAS officer Medha Roopam who was allocated the union territory cadre, but wants to be shifted to Uttar Pradesh where her batchmate, Manish Bansal, will spend his career.

Officials said most of them would be accommodated, but a handful could still get left out.

Some states like Chhattisgarh that face an acute shortage of IAS officers usually refuses to let a young officer go to another state. So when Riju Bafna asked for a change of cadre from Chhattisgarh to Madhya Pradesh, the state allocated to her husband Avi Prasad, she was told she wouldn’t be transferred but Prasad could be accommodated if he moved from Bhopal to Raipur.

“There have been instances where the two states have refused to let go of their officers for years,” a government official said. The Centre is mulling giving itself some powers to intervene only in cases where one of the two officers is disabled.