Barely five days in the saddle, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal is hard at work trying to pick a team for manning the Chief Minister’s Office. The state services officers, who earlier worked with him closely and later paid a heavy price for their loyalties during the Congress regime, are likely to be suitably rehabilitated. A few others, who also remained sidelined and were treated as “suspects” by the Congress, are getting new posting orders one by one.

Though Dhumal has not ordered any major administrative reshuffle and has not formed his team yet, a tussle is on within the police department and Himachal Administrative Services (HAS) to grab significant posts.

In the top bureaucracy, what matters most is the post of deputy commissioners and officers are trying their best to get prominent districts.

On the other hand, there is an intense tussle among IPS officers, who are not only drawing lists of favoured postings for themselves, but also insignificant posts on which Congress loyalists could be dumped.

A senior officer admitted to The Indian Express that some “like-minded” officers have been shortlisted for their postings as SPs, DIGs and IGPs. “We were victimised by the Congress government, but now it’s our turn to ask for choice postings,” an IPS officer said. When asked if the Chief Minister or state Home Secretary had been taken into confidence, the officer parried the question, adding, “Well, some of us have already met the Chief Minister.”

A case in point is controversial IPS officer B.S. Thind, who had made a sudden comeback after Virbhadra Singh’s return to power. He was immediately promoted to Additional DGP despite a case pending against him in the Vigilance Bureau.

However, the innocent sufferers in this battle of loyalties are the few officers who have remained neutral, as even they are being targeted by their own colleagues. “This is only because they want to grab attention,” said one such officer.