Housing secretary S V R Srinivas
MUMBAI: Housing secretary S V R Srinivas will be the new MMRDA commissioner in place of R A Rajeev whose extended three-month tenure ended on May 31. Rajeev was scheduled to retire on February 28 but was given a three-month extension. Srinivas, an IAS officer of the 1991 batch, had worked in MMRDA previously as additional commissioner.
There was buzz in the corridors of power that Rajeev would be given an extension of one year. Following objections by a section of senior cabinet members and bureaucrats, though, he was given a threemonth extension. There was a proposal to give him a further extension of nine months. It was dropped, though, following a strongly worded letter from textiles minister Aslam Shaikh, who had raised a red flag over the state government’s extension policy. Shaikh’s contention was that as a principle, the government should not give extensions to retiring bureaucrats, as it results in great injustice to serving bureaucrats.