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A recently-superannuated agriculture secretary is among nine shortlisted for the post of Chairperson of the Agricultural Scientists’ Recruitment Board (ASRB).
Shobhana K Pattanayak, retired on September 30 as agriculture secretary to the Indian Government and Prabhat Kumar, an Uttar Pradesh-cadre IAS officer currently serving as Agriculture Production Commissioner in Lucknow, are believed to have been asked to appear before the Search-cum-Selection Committee in the last week of this month, according to some scientists who are in the know of the development.
Among others under consideration are senior agricultural scientists with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and agricultural universities, said the sources who requested anonymity.
It is for the first time that civil servants are being considered for the post of ASRB chief, who is instrumental in selecting scientists working in Indian agricultural research system, including directors or heads of 108 scientific institutions under the ICAR. At least half the ICAR institutions do not currently have regular directors and are run by senior scientists as acting directors.
Early this year, the government amended the recruitment rules for the selection of ASRB chief to allow serving or retired bureaucrats to apply for the job, much to the dismay of the agricultural scientific community. The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), the apex academy of agricultural scientists and scientists, in their personal capacity, wrote to the Prime Ministers Office requesting it desist from the move. They failed to get a reply.
In 2017 the government constituted a high-level expert committee under the chairmanship of R S Paroda, former Director General of ICARand Secretary of Department of Agricultural Research and Extension to suggest ways to restructure the Board. Opting for a serving or retired bureaucrat as the ASRB head was not among its many recommendations. The proposal to consider bureaucrats for the posts of Chairman and Members of ASRB also came before the ICAR governing body early last year, but the decision-making body turned down the idea.
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