Rajesh Kumar Meena Selected as Deputy Secretary in School Education Department Under Central Staffing

Rajesh Kumar Meena, an officer of the Indian Revenue Service, Customs and Indirect Taxes, from the 2015 batch, has been selected for appointment as Deputy Secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy. The Department of Personnel and Training issued the office memorandum on August 11, marking it ""Most Immediate,"" with the appointment running for four years from the date Meena takes charge, or until further orders, whichever is earlier.

Meena was recommended for Central deputation by the Department of Revenue, and his selection places him in one of the Central Staffing Scheme's education-sector postings, where Deputy Secretaries handle coordination on schemes including the Samagra Shiksha programme, mid-day meal implementation oversight, and the department's engagement with World Bank and Asian Development Bank-supported education projects. The post also involves administrative coordination on the National Education Policy's school-level rollout.

Before this selection, Meena was serving on deputation with the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs as Deputy Commissioner in the Lucknow GST and Central Excise Zone, handling indirect tax administration and enforcement functions. His move from a tax-administration posting into an education-sector Deputy Secretary role is a common pathway under the Central Staffing Scheme, which draws officers from revenue and other technical services into general administrative postings at the Centre to broaden their exposure beyond their parent cadre's specialised functions.

The order specifically notes the government's standing directive, conveyed through a 2005 DoPT circular, that officers selected under the Central Staffing Scheme must join their new posts within three weeks of the appointment order's issuance, failing which the process of debarment from the scheme is initiated. The inclusion of this reminder in Meena's order signals the department's routine emphasis on timely joining for Central Staffing Scheme postings, a requirement that applies uniformly across all such selections regardless of the officer's parent service.

Meena's appointment adds an Indian Revenue Service officer to a department whose administrative roster is typically drawn from a mix of IAS and other Group A services, bringing a financial-administration background to a Deputy Secretary post that increasingly involves oversight of centrally sponsored scheme funding flows to states, an area where revenue-service officers' expertise in financial compliance and audit trails is considered useful.

His four-year Central Staffing Scheme term places him in the Deputy Secretary post through multiple budget cycles of the Samagra Shiksha programme, which channels Central funding to states for school infrastructure, teacher training and inclusive education initiatives. The department has been working through implementation challenges tied to state-level fund utilisation certificates and expenditure reporting, an area where Meena's tax-administration background in compliance verification is expected to be directly applicable.

The Department of Revenue has been asked to forward a copy of the formal notification of Meena's appointment once issued, a standard administrative step that closes the loop between the parent department relinquishing the officer and the receiving department formally taking him on strength for the Central Staffing Scheme posting.

The office memorandum, numbered 4/18/2026-EO (MM-I) and dated August 11, 2026, was issued by Ajit Kumar Ranjan, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, and addressed to the Department of Revenue under Secretary Arvind Shrivastava, with a copy to the Department of School Education and Literacy under Secretary T. K. Anil Kumar.