Bhopal, Nov 30 (PTI) The Madhya Pradesh government on Wednesday night decided to give the additional charge of chief secretary to senior IAS officer Veera Rana, a senior official said.
The 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer is currently posted as chairperson of the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education and also holds the additional charge of the state’s agriculture production commissioner.
Rana, who will take charge of the new assignment on Thursday, will be only the second woman bureaucrat in Madhya Pradesh’s history to function as chief secretary, a state’s top bureaucratic post.
IAS officer Nirmala Buch had the distinction of serving as the state’s first woman chief secretary (in early 1990s).
Rana will take charge of chief secretary from senior administrative officer Iqbal Singh Bains, who is retiring from service after getting two extensions.
The 1985-batch IAS officer was supposed to retire on November 30, 2022, but was given a six- month extension (till May 31, 2023) and another extension for the same period till November 30 in view of the assembly elections.
The Congress had vociferously opposed the second extension granted to Bains by the BJP government.
The state government has called a cabinet meeting on Thursday to give a farewell to Bains, sources said.
