Two ex-IAS officers join Congress in poll-bound Chhattisgarh

Raipur: Two retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers from Chhattisgarh have joined the Congress ahead of the state Assembly elections slated for later this year.

While former IAS officer and the states ex-chief information commissioner, Serjius Minj, joined the Congress on Sunday, former bureaucrat RPS Tyagi was inducted on Saturday.

They were inducted into the party in the presence of AICC Chhattisgarh-in-charge P L Punia, state Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel and other leaders.

"Congress party leaders, particularly from my area Kunkuri (in tribal-dominated Jashpur district of the state), have been requesting me from the past one year to join," Minj said.

"I had been doing public service earlier and it is just an extension of that in a different form," he added.

"I believe in the ideology of the Congress which respects the multi-lingual, multi-culture, multi-caste and multi-religious framework of the country and works for the development of all," Minj said.

He is likely to contest the upcoming Assembly polls from Kunkuri though Minj added that a decision on it would be taken by the Congress high command.

Minj, a 1978 batch IAS officer, retired as additional chief secretary in 2011 and was then appointed chief information commissioner of the State Information Commission, a post he held till 2016.

Tyagi was inducted into the IAS in 2001.

Following his retirement in 2015, Tyagi was appointed secretary of the State Administrative Reforms Commission and had resigned from the post in May this year.

A native of Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar who now lives in Korba in Chhattisgarh, Tyagi had earlier served as district collector of Dhamtari, Korba and Janjgir Champa.

"As a bureaucrat, I have done social welfare but there were certain limitations. I believe a political platform is very essential do it on a wider scale," he said.

Recently, 2005 batch IAS officer O P Choudhary had quit government service and joined the ruling BJP.