Atal Dulloo appointed as Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir

Son of the soil, Dulloo, a 1988 batch IAS officer, hails from Kulgam district of south Kashmir and has helmed several departments during his service tenure.

Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): The Central Government has appointed senior Indian Administrative Service officer Atal Dulloo as the new Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir. Dulloo replaces the outgoing Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta. Mehta is retiring from the job on November 30 Thursday.

Son of the soil: Born in the year 1966, Dulloo originally hails from Kulgam district in south Kashmir, but his father shifted to Srinagar and later moved to Delhi. Atal Dulloo is a 1988 batch IAS officer and preferred IAS after pursuing engineering. Dulloo went on deputation to the central government last year, but last week he was repatriated back to the union territory by the central government before being appointed as the Jammu and Kashmir chief secretary.

Several awards to his name: Significantly, Dulloo has been honored with the State Award for meritorious work on Republic Day in 2013. In 1996, he was awarded the Silver Award for successfully conducting the assembly elections. In Jammu and Kashmir, Atal Dulloo has worked in about 24 different departments, including as Financial Commissioner of Health and Medical Education and lastly Additional Chief Secretary of Agriculture Department.

It can be recalled that outgoing Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta was appointed to the post on 31 May 2021. He had replaced former bureaucrat BVR Subrahmanyam, who was appointed as the Chief Secretary after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Subrahmanyam's tenure was marred by a speculated rift with the then Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu.

Murmu was later replaced by present Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha. Outgoing Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta too had made several controversial statements against government employees. His statement that 2.5 lakh employees in Jammu and Kashmir had been appointed illegally or through backdoor means had caused a stir in the political circles at the time.