Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has appointed former chief secretary Somesh Kumar as his chief advisor in the rank of Cabinet minister for three years after the latter took voluntary retirement from service following his allocation to Andhra Pradesh cadre by the high court.

Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS officer was appointed as the chief secretary by Rao in 2019 superseding several senior officers and his tenure would have come to an end in December this year, around the time elections are slated to be held in the state.

Although he was allocated to Andhra Pradesh in 2014, he stayed put in Telangana, thanks to a favourable order from the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). However, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) challenged the order in the high court which reallocated him to the Andhra Pradesh cadre in January this year quashing an order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).

Somesh Kumar then was immediately ordered by DoPT to report at Vijayawada. Rao, in the meantime, was forced to choose his successor for the post of chief secretary. Although the IAS officer had the option to move Supreme Court against the order of the High Court he chose to instead report to the Andhra Pradesh chief secretary who is junior to him before seeking voluntary retirement for service.

On 24 April, when the chief minister and BRS supremo, visited Aurangabad in Maharashtra to hold a public rally, Somesh Kumar was spotted in the meeting. He held discussion with political leaders from the state on the expansion of BRS in the neighbouring state. Earlier, Rao had appointed Rajiv Sharma the first chief secretary of the newly carved out state as his advisor when he retired in 2016.

Veteran leader Marri Sashidhar Reddy, who is currently in BJP after leaving Congress, had alleged that as commissioner of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Kumar had been instrumental in the large scale deletion of names from the voters list in Hyderabad before civic elections in 2016. He had termed Somesh Kumar’s exit from Telangana government as good riddance.