WB Gives Tanmay Chakrabarty Additional Charge of Secretary, School Education

Tanmay Chakrabarty now holds two more additional charges: Secretary, Mass Education Extension and Library Services Department, and Secretary, School Education Department. The 2006-batch IAS officer is currently Director of the ESI Scheme in the Labour Department. The order came through on Saturday.

School Education runs policy and administration for one of the country's largest government and government-aided school networks. Mass Education Extension and Library Services runs adult literacy and public library programmes, reaching districts where formal school access has historically lagged. Chakrabarty now sits across three distinct areas of social-sector administration at once, alongside his existing Labour Department role.

He has been Director of the Employees' State Insurance Scheme in the Labour Department for some time — a technical scheme-administration post handling healthcare and insurance benefits for organised-sector workers.

That ESI post stays with him. Both education charges are additional, not a transfer.

Stacking Mass Education Extension, Library Services and School Education onto an officer already running a labour-sector portfolio suggests the state is bridging a vacancy at the top of its school education administration through additional charge rather than an immediate transfer — a pattern that has repeated at senior levels in the cadre this year.

Chakrabarty will now handle school education policy and adult literacy and library programme oversight, on top of his continuing ESI Scheme duties — a combined workload spanning three separate departmental structures.

The West Bengal government did not specify how long the additional-charge arrangement is expected to continue.