In a a first, Kerala will witness a rare change of guard when the incumbent chief secretary Dr V Venu will hand over the baton to his wife Sarada Muraleedharan on his retirement from service on August 31.
This is a similar phenomenon which had happened last month in the neighbouring Karnataka where Dr Shalini Rajneesh replaced her husband Dr Rajneesh Goyal as chief secretary.
This is the first time in Kerala that an IAS couple in unbroken sequence become the chief secretaries. Since the formation of the state in 1956, Kerala had two occasions when IAS couples became the chief secretaries, but those were not consecutive terms.
Venu and Sarada belong to the 1990 batch of IAS. Sarada is currently additional chief secretary of the Local Self-Government Department.
She had headed the state flagship poverty alleviation scheme Kudumbashree Mission for six years from 2006 and 2012, a period marked by several initiatives of women empowerment.
During central deputation from 2013, Sarada had worked as chief operating officer at the National Rural Livelihood Mission under the Rural Development Ministry till 2013.
She also served as a joint secretary at the Panchayat Raj Ministry, where she was responsible for conceptualising the gram panchayat development plans that put a premium on citizen participation through the gram sabha.
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