Finance Secretary Garg seeks VRS after being shifted to Power Ministry

A day after his transfer to the Power Ministry, former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg has offered to resign under the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS), unconfirmed reports said.

In a surprise move, the government on Wednesday appointed the erstwhile Secretary for Finance and the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Subash Chandra Garg as the Power Secretary, among other bureaucratic appointments.

Although reports of the senior bureaucrat opting for VRS have surfaced, neither the ministry nor Garg himself has come out with any statement. Garg, a 1983 batch IAS officer from the Rajasthan cadre, was to take over as the Secretary for Economic Affairs before assuming the charge of Finance Secretary in 2018.

The transfer to the Power Ministry is seen as a relegation for Garg, as the designation of Finance Secretary is one of the most coveted in bureaucratic circles and usually goes to the senior most official in the ministry.

The move, however, should not be surprising as this is not the first time the Modi-led NDA government has made such major changes.

In 2014, after the Modi-led government took charge for the first time, the government transferred the then Finance Secretary Arvind Mayaram to the tourism department.

In the Wednesday order, with Garg on his way out of the Finance Ministry, Atanu Chakraborty, the erstwhile Secretary for the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), was named the Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs.