As the revamp of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under Narendra Modi continues with an aim to ensure that the high office remain taint-free, the government, in a significant move on Thursday, shifted Shatrughna Singh, additional secretary there, to the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP).
Mr Singh’s name had incidentally cropped up during a Supreme Court hearing in the “coalgate” scam last year when CBI director Ranjit Sinha had told the apex court in an affidavit that the probe agency shown confidential coal scam status reports to then law minister Ashwani Kumar as well as two officials in the PMO.
As per the government order, a copy of which is there with this newspaper, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved Mr Singh’s shifting to DIPP and his replacement at the PMO would be Rajiv Nayan Choubey, an IAS officer of the 1981 batch from Tamil Nadu cadre, who so far was the additional secretary in ministry of power. Mr Chaubey will be the fourth official inducted into the PMO after Narendra Modi assumed office last month.
Mr Singh, a 1983 batch IAS officer of the Uttarakhand cadre was with the PMO under UPA since March 2010 when he joined as a joint secretary. He was promoted as the additional secretary in PMO on July 15 last year and still has tenure at the Centre till March 3, 2015.
Mr Singh was the only additional secretary rank officer in the PMO. He was looking after over a dozen important ministries like home, coal, steel, environment and forests, urban development, rural development and parliamentary affairs.