CS Santhi Kumari will continue

Although a regime change is normally followed by an overhaul of the administration, affecting everyone from top to bottom; in Telangana, incumbent Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari is significantly likely to continue in her position. The reason being cited in the corridors of power is that she has never taken sides, much less of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi government, and has been discharging her functions with probity and as a stickler for rules. The talk of her being retained at the helm is doing the rounds in power centres in the backdrop of whispers that bureaucrats are now being run through a sieve that sifts those “who took sides” from those “who did not take sides”. A list of bureaucrats who have taken sides is doing the rounds, leaving some haughty seniors edgy. For newbies, Santhi Kumari was not in the race for the position of CS until she was named at the eleventh hour by BRS chief and former CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, who reportedly weighed her Kapu community background as the determining factor. Maybe, she has not taken sides so far. But for how long she will continue to do so is another question that time will answer.