MOHAN YADAV'S MERRY-GO-ROUND

The equation is: 19 months, 19 bureaucrats. That's how busy the turnstiles have been at the CMO. But why?

- Rahul Noronha

STABILITY FOR THE GOVERNMENT may be a foregone conclusion in Madhya Pradesh, where the ruling BJP holds 164 out of 230 seats in the assembly, but the same cannot be said about stability of bureaucratic tenures. Even in the chief minister's secretariat, where the occupants are usually handpicked by the CM himself.

A total of 19 IAS officers have been shifted in and out of the CM secretariat in as many months of the Mohan Yadav regime, both at the top and middle levels of the organisation. That unprecedented tenurial instability in an all-powerful department prompts the question: is the CM unable to find a team he trusts? Or does he defer to other people's decisions?