B Shivdhar Reddy appointed as Telangana Intelligence chief; V Seshadri Secretary to CM

Hyderabad: Senior IPS officer and additional director general B Shivdhar Reddy has been appointed as the Intelligence chief of Telangana and senior IAS officer V Seshadri has been appointed as the secretary to the chief minister.

A major IPS and IAS reshuffle is expected once chief minister A Revanth Reddy, his deputy and Cabinet ministers take charge. The reshuffle will also depend on the nature of portfolios allocated to the ministers.

Speaking to NewsMeter, a senior IPS officer on condition of anonymity said, “The Congress government in power in Telangana now is ahead by a handful of MLAs. There is a slim majority in the Legislature House. The job of the Intelligence Wing officers is not only to keep an eye on the opposition but on the Congress MLAs and internal party activities. Look at Rajasthan, the officer on special duty to former CM Ashok Gehlot spilled the beans about Congress leader Sachin Pilot. This was purely based on inputs given by the Intelligence Wing.”

The Gehlot incident

Explaining the incident, the officer said, “A close aide of Ashok Gehlot revealed Sachin Pilot's movements were being monitored at a point and sensed that he was trying to break the government. In this background, Ashok saved the government from collapsing thanks to the intel. This is how critical the wing is.”

IPS officer B Shivdhar Reddy also headed the Intelligence Wing after the formation of Telangana, although briefly. An officer of the 1994 batch, he served as the DIG Special Intelligence Bureau and earlier was the superintendent of police of Nalgonda, Nellore and Guntur.

It is also being tipped off that special chief secretary of Finance K. Ramakrishna Rao will be the next chief secretary. When asked the officer about the next DGP, he smiled and said, “The DGP post will more or less be a nominal head. The department will be now controlled by the Intelligence chief.”

It should be recalled that CM Revanth Reddy, on many occasions, called out senior bureaucrats for taking the side of the earlier BRS government during its time. On one occasion, he also said ‘I have noted the names of many such officers and saved them in my diary.’ The bureaucrats holding the position for a decade may feature in the first round of reshuffle.