Protest rocks India's premier spy agency

The country's external intelligence gathering agency Research and Analysis Wing is in a fix as six of its senior officials have gone on leave after they were superseded by an IPS officer who came from the Intelligence Bureau.

The six Additional Secretaries continue to be on leave even after Cabinet Secretariat conducted a meeting of Departmental Promotional Committee (DPC) for the officials, who were ranked as Additional Secretaries in the external spy agency, to ascertain if they could be promoted further, sources in Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) agency said on Tuesday.

The trouble began when the government cleared A B Mathur, a 1975 batch IPS officer from Manipur cadre, for promotion as Special Director General and posted in RAW as Special Secretary.

Among those who had been superseded were Chakru Sinha, who was of 1973 batch and four officers of 1975 batch of RAW Allied Services (RAS) cadre.

RAS cadre officials traditionally have an upper hand over officials from IPS and IAS joining their service. Any official joining RAW is usually placed at the bottom of the service with no seniority benefit.

The issue of "outsiders" has been a problem in RAW ever since A S Dulat had joined the agency as its Chief. He was a Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau.

The government had brought Director General of Kerala Police P K Hormese Tharakan as new chief of RAW in 2005 superseding Special Secretary J K Sinha who resigned.

This was followed by an embarrassing episode of the escape of a RAW Director Rabinder Singh at that time, which prompted the government to examine the rules governing promotion in the external intelligence agency.

After Tharakan, Ashok Chaturvedi, a 1970-batch IAS officer, was appointed as the next chief of RAW. His appointment sidelined Amber Sen who had been made a Special Director in RAW months ahead of him.