Centre Transfers 33 ISS Officers at Director and Additional Statistical Adviser Level

The central government has issued transfer orders for 33 officers of the Indian Statistical Service (ISS) holding the ranks of Director and Additional Statistical Adviser, reassigning them across ministries and statistical offices under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). The transfers affect officers from the 2008 through 2025 batches and span a wide range of postings — from the National Statistical Office's Field Operations Division and Headquarters units to postings in ministries such as Rural Development, Commerce, Mines, Defence, New and Renewable Energy, Petroleum, and Finance. Among the transfers, Shailesh Kumar (ISS: 2008) moves from the Ministry of Rural Development to the FOD Headquarters, NSO, Delhi. Avishek Podder (ISS: 2010) moves from DGCI&S, Ministry of Commerce to the Ministry of Mines. Sonia Sharma (ISS: 2010) shifts from the Department of Agriculture to SSD, NSO, MoSPI. Moinak Mukherjee (ISS: 2011) returns from deputation under the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The list includes officers moving between NSO regional offices in cities including Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, Jalandhar, Shimla, Guwahati, Jaipur, Burdwan, and Cuttack, as well as deployments to sectoral ministries such as Youth Affairs, Heavy Industries, Consumer Affairs, Water Resources, Textiles, and Law and Justice. Junior ISS officers from the 2019, 2021, 2024, and 2025 batches are also covered in the order, with postings that indicate their first substantive ministerial and field assignments following the completion of training requirements. The scale of this transfer exercise — covering three dozen officers across the entire ISS hierarchy — points to the government's effort to ensure adequate statistical capacity across key ministries and regional data-collection units at a time when policy planning relies heavily on timely and granular data.