Last week our imperious home minister threw the rulebook at the governments of Goa CM Manohar Parrikar and Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit who had protested against "unilateral" transfer of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers. Chidambaram told these CMs that the officers shifted out had spent far too long at one place. While most states have their own cadre of officers, four states —Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Mizoram and Goa — and all union territories — Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu and Dadar & Nagar Haveli, Lakshadweep and Puducherry — are served by a common pool of All-India Service Officers (AIS) placed under the AGMUT cadre.

Parrikar had lashed out at Chidambaram, demanding an apology for unilaterally transferring IPS officers. Dikshit was unhappy at the ministry of home affairs's orders transferring seven IAS officers out of Delhi including her principal secretary MM Kutty, industry secretary Chetan B Sanghi and Delhi Jal Board chief Debashree Mukherjee who had taken over less than a month ago. Dikshit even met Chidambaram on this.

To understand what’s going on, here’s the constitutional position and what’s being passed of as rules:

The bulk of India's federal structure is borne by the three AIS. Some would call “backbone” of the delivery instrument. These guys, belonging to the IAS, the IPS, and the Indian Forest Service (IFS), man the top civilian jobs across India’s states. For background, distinct from the three AIS, the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Revenue Service, the Indian Railway Traffic Service, among others, are central services, falling under exclusive domain of New Delhi.

Officers from the three AIS are recruited via the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) but are then allotted to one among 24 state cadres.  A small number that aren’t, find themselves in “joint cadres.”

Assam and Meghalaya is one such “joint cadre”. Manipur and Tripura is another, though all but de-hyphenated already, after Parliamentary assent to Section 61 of the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971.

The contradiction of expecting chief ministers of full-fledged states like Manipur and Tripura to share with one another power over their top civil servants dawned upon the Union home ministry (MHA) only recently. That’s how the 1971 Act was amended and Agartala and Imphal freed from a forced marriage of this sort.

After the Manipur-Tripura de-hyphenation, when MHA’s parliamentary panel rapped MHA for dragging such a simple matter for over ten years, the Union home secretary went on the record making an astonishing assertion: that his ministry is learning by experience!

This, however, didn’t stop him from denying any need to similarly de-hyphenate the joint Assam and Meghalaya cadre. “There is no such demand in Meghalaya,” the home secretary claimed. Further, perhaps by force of habit, the MHA’s top civil servant alluded that the state was too small to merit a full-fledged cadre of each of the three AIS.As for “lack of demand” from Meghalaya, the only thing one might say is that perhaps the MHA is programmed to respond when a state is up in arms.

As for size, or the lack of it, with an area of 22,000 square km, the state is larger than Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, not to mention being three-times larger than Sikkim. What explains that even Sikkim has an independent cadre of AIS to call its own? If it were a country, Meghalaya would be the size of Israel. But how would the Union home secretary meddle in a fact of international geography!

In this backdrop of denial and benign neglect lies the fate of “AGMUT” officers. Related to them is anger and resentment of state civil, police and forest officers, who are destined to work under these “imports.”

The anger has a solid basis. You have under the “AGMUT” umbrella, AIS officers who have nothing in common at all, besides the morbid fear that they can be thrown from Panaji to Aizwal, Itanagar to Andaman, any time their joint cadre management authority, the MHA in the case of the IAS and the IPS, and the ministry of environment and forests (MoeF) in case of IFS, deigns to.

The AGMUT case, as may be apparent, is entirely dependent on the whims of MHA/MoeF, unlike the joint cadres among Assam-Meghalaya and Manipur-Tripura, where power is shared among the respective chief ministers.

It is under this dispensation that home minister P Chidambaram and a joint secretary reporting to him move around 221 IAS officers and 159 IPS officers in any manner the mantri wants among Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and the national capital territory of Delhi (NCT). Chief ministers Nabam Tuki, Manohar Parrikar, Lal Thanhawla and Sheila Dikshit are expected to take whoever PC hands out. Ditto from Jayathi Natarajan.

Stated more bluntly, for Chidambaram and Natarajan, in the existing system, the chief ministers of Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram and NCT are no bigger than administrations of the Union Territories, Andaman & Nicobar, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Lakshdweep, and Pondicherry.

Suffice to say, the “AGMUT” scheme is fundamentally unconstitutional, for it forces Arunachal, Goa and Mizoram, by no means any inferior in Constitutional status to any other state in the Union, with a fait accompli over their own AIS officers. Their writ over its officers starts only when an officer is forced upon them by Chidambaram or Natarjan. Once the officer has been saddled on to them, the only thing the CM can do is her inter se transfer within the state.

On a quick historical note, all the aggrieved states were UTs at one point of time. Eversince, it’s been the Union holding on to its turf for as long as it can.

New states like Uttarakhand, which was carved out of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand that came out of Bihar, and Chattisgarh created with the division of Madhya Pradesh, were given their own AIS cadres alongside the reorganization of the parent state. No such luck for Arunachal, Goa or Mizoram, a logic that’s flawed to say the least.

NCT, of course, might have to live without a cadre of its own, because it overlaps with the nation’s capital and the Union of India can’t obviously abdicate control over administration and police functions to a hostile state government.

A quick afterword on PC’s or Natarajan’s fate vis-à-vis all other states that have full-fledged AIS cadres. The duo can’t summon any AIS officer to central deputation if the state chief minister wants to rub their noses to the ground. Conversely, the state CM can recall any AIS officer serving on deputation to the centre, without citing any reason whatsoever. Even among Arunachal, Goa and Mizoram, those officers who strike roots with the state CM have been known to refuse to obey MHA/MoeF transfer. That’s another story. Meanwhile, any guesses how long PC and Natarajan don’t get tested by Nabam Tuki, Manohar Parrikar, and Lal Thanhawla on a flawed constitutional wicket?