K Ramakrishna Rao Appointed Advisor and Ex-Officio Special Chief Secretary to Telangana CM After Retirement

K Ramakrishna Rao, the outgoing Chief Secretary of Telangana, has been appointed as Advisor and Ex-officio Special Chief Secretary to the Chief Minister upon his superannuation on June 30, 2026. Rao is a 1991-batch IAS officer of the Telangana cadre.

Post-retirement engagements of the Advisor-to-Chief Minister variety allow state governments to retain officers with specific institutional knowledge during sensitive transition periods. In Rao's case, his tenure as Chief Secretary has spanned a period of concentrated administrative activity under the Congress government — a phase during which the government has been reconfiguring welfare delivery systems, revisiting land records, and undertaking large-scale personnel changes. His continued presence in an advisory capacity gives the incoming Chief Secretary's office access to that institutional continuity.

Rao joined the IAS in 1991 and has spent the bulk of his career within the pre-bifurcation Andhra Pradesh and subsequently in the Telangana cadre after the state's formation in June 2014. Officers of his vintage navigated the complex administrative separation that followed bifurcation — including the division of assets, personnel, and records between the two successor states. That experience makes him a resource the government is evidently unwilling to retire entirely from the administrative ecosystem. His most recent years saw him rise through Additional Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary postings before assuming the Chief Secretary role.

As Chief Secretary, Rao served as the administrative head of a government managing the intersection of a Congress political mandate with a largely Telugu Desam-era administrative structure in some departments. He was associated with the government's efforts to operationalise several flagship schemes, including its land distribution and welfare transfer programs. Officers in his position typically manage the coordination between the CM's office and individual departments rather than lead any single domain initiative.

The appointment as Advisor ensures that Rao's exit from service does not create a hard break in the Chief Minister's office operations. Telangana has seen multiple post-retirement advisory appointments over the past two years as the government has calibrated the pace of personnel changes at the senior level. The Ex-officio Special Chief Secretary rank attached to the advisory role gives Rao formal standing to interface with secretaries and principal secretaries across departments.

His successor, Sanjay Jaju, takes charge on July 1. The overlap arrangement — Rao moving into the advisory role on the same day — is structured to minimise any gap in the Chief Secretary's office operations during what is typically a brief but sensitive administrative handover period at the state's senior-most bureaucratic post.

The orders for Rao's post-retirement appointment were issued alongside the broader June 27 reshuffle that reorganised several Principal Secretary-level positions in the Telangana government.