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3rd top PMO officer quits before completing tenure

Kashmir Times. Dated: 8/3/2021 2:23:00 AM

KT NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, Aug 2: A second Sinha, a confidant bureaucrat of Prime Minister Modi, on Monday quit his post seven months ahead of his 2-year tenure in the Prime Minister's Office) PMO), the highest public office in the country, four months after his boss Pradeep Kumar Sinha, a former Cabinet Secretary, resigned.

He is Amarjeet Sinha (62), a retired 1983-batch IAS officer from the Bihar cadre, who was appointed as an adviser in the PMO in February 2020 and tasked with handling the social sector-related subjects. Earlier in March, Pradeep Kumar Sinha (65), the principal adviser to the PM, a retired IAS officer of 1977 batch of UP cadre and a former Cabinet Secretary for four years with three extensions, had suddenly quit the office.

There has been no official statement from the PMO over the resignation, nor has Sinha offered a reason for the move alike the sudden resignation of his boss, another Sinha.

Amarjeet and Bhaskar Khulbe of the West Bengal cadre, both retired 1963 batch IAS officers, had joined under Pradeep Kumar Sinha in February last year. Amarjeet had retired as the rural development secretary in 2019 before he was picked up for one of the top slots in the PMO. A special position as principal secretary was created for P K Sinha in September 2019 after the Parliamentary polls and he picked up Amarjeet and Khulbe to work under him.

This is the third major resignation in the PMO since the start of Narendra Modi's second term in 2019. The first to go was the PM's principal secretary Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra (76), who resigned all of a sudden in 2019, after serving him in the post in his first term. Misra, a UP born and a retired IAS officer of 1967 batch of the UP cadre, is now the chairman of the Ram Mandir Construction Committee under the Sri Ram Jamnbhoomi Tirth Kshetra Trusts.