Posting flip-flops land MEA in a mega mess

Posting flip-flops land MEA in a mega mess
ARATI R. JERATH

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 21: After a series of flip-flops in recent months over ambassadorial assignments, senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs are running scared of transfers and postings. Nothing is final till it is implemented. Or so the joke goes in MEA's staid corridors.

While head-of-mission postings have always been subject to the whims of Foreign Service officers and their political masters, the recent somersaults are unprecedented in scale and diplomatic embarrassment. Decisions were overturned after being approved and agreement papers withdrawn after being sent. In the process, the MEA's bosses have opened a Pandora's Box of confusion which they are still trying to sort out.

For instance, the last-minute decision to knock Kanwal Sibal out of the reckoning for the post of Foreign Secretary has blocked Savitri Konadi's move to Paris as his successor. Upset by the Ministry's abrupt change of heart, Sibal is believed to have dug in his heels in France and refused to come back.

Till Sibal cools down, it's status quo in Paris which means Konadi has to stay put in Geneva where she heads the Indian mission to the United Nations. In the process, Shyamala Cowsik's posting as Konadi's replacement stands cancelled. Ironically, the agreement papers for Konadi were sent to the French Government for clearance. This is the final stage of an ambassadorial posting.

To compensate Cowsik, the Ministry has now decided to send her to The Netherlands which incidentally was Chokila Iyer's destination till she was turned around and posted back to Delhi as Foreign Secretary. Like Konadi's, Iyer's agreement papers had been sent to the concerned government for the mandatory clearance only to be withdrawn.

Incidentally, Sibal's proposed appointment as Foreign Secretary found a mention in the file sent to President K.R. Narayanan seeking approval for Konadi's transfer to Paris. It was an unusual move which led to an equallyunusual meeting between senior Foreign Service officials and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Sibal would have superceded as many as 22 officers of both the 1964 and 1965 batches, four of whom were posted right here in Delhi. An IFS delegation of affected officials, led by Secretary (West) R.S. Kala, submitted a memorandum of protest to Vajpayee. And Sibal lost out.

The confusion that seems to have gripped the decision-makers in the MEA hasaffected others as well. Additional Secretary P.L. Goel was sounded out for Egypt. Now S.J. Singh is being sent there instead. The High Commissioner in Canada, Rajnikant Verma, was tipped for Thailand. Now the Ministry has changed its mind and settled on Leela Ponappa.

Ponappa was herself a victim of her bosses' flips. She was done out of a posting to Washington as Deputy Chief of Mission although her transfer orders were issued. Instead of her, the MEA packed off Alok Prasad from the Americas desk despite the fact that it had sought and received the agreement from the Mauritius Government for Prasad.

Ronnen Sen is a fellow sufferer. His agreement papers had been prepared by the Ministry for his move to London. They were cancelled at the last minute on grounds of ``ill health''. Now he's been asked to stay on in Berlin for a year. Consequently, former Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath, who was sounded out for the posting in Germany, is in limbo.

The High Commissioner in London, Naresh Dayal, was to retire on December 31, 2000. First, he was given a four-month extension till Sen took over. Now that Sen's appointment stands cancelled, Dayal has been given an additional extension of eight months till the Ministry takes a decision on the next High Commissioner to the UK.

Sen was actually a victim of IFS politics with an influential lobby within the Service working overtime through BJP connections to kill his posting to London. The campaign against him got so dirty that anonymous letters making unsubstantiated allegations were circulated in the Ministry and the PMO.

The confusion over postings seems to have outstripped the confusion over policy that prevailed after the Pokharan tests. Insiders blame much of the fiasco on the move to make Sibal Foreign Secretary. They feel the decision-makers should have been told that it would be unprecedented and inadvisable to supercede so many officers. Once the Sibal decision was overturned, a vital link in the transfer chain snapped and sent the whole thing into a spin.

Some sufferers

*Kanwal Sibal
*Savitri Konadi
*Shyamala Cowsik
*P.L. Goel
*Rajnikant Verma
*Leela Ponappa
*Ronnen Sen