After a long 35-day wait, three Rajasthan IAS officers from the 1995 batch—Ashwini Bhagat, Kunji Lal Meena, and Rajeev Singh Thakur—have been finally promoted to the position of Additional Chief Secretary (ACS).
Two senior officers from the same batch, Praveen Gupta and Bhaskar Sawant, had earlier been promoted to ACS level on January 1, 2025 itself. The delay for these remaining three officers came after it was revealed that, due to regulations denoting only 14 ACS in the state, only two senior most officers could be promoted.
The confusion was created when in 2017, 20 IAS officers were promoted to ACS, and in 2018, a total of 23 IAS officers were promoted to ACS. But this time, the Personnel Department became strict about the rules and regulations and did not promote the remaining 3 IAS officers of the 1995 batch.
After this, the remaining three officers appealed to Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, seeking his intervention. After weeks of waiting, their perseverance paid off, and on Thursday, Chief Minister Bhajan Lal granted the promotions.
This move by the government has been widely appreciated in bureaucratic circle. IAS officers Ajitabh Sharma, Alok Gupta, Dinesh Kumar, & Rajesh Yadav, who were next in line for promotions in January 2026, are also pleased with this decision, as it paves the way for their future ACS promotions as well.
