With as many as six of its IAS officers figuring in the list of 45 empanelled for appointment as additional secretaries at the centre, Gujarat tops the list, followed by four from Uttar Pradesh, and three each from Rajasthan, Bihar and the union territories.

The list was approved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh early this week on the basis of the recommendation of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) headed by former CVC P Shankar that was constituted by the government to pick up the best from 108 IAS officers of the 1980 batch.

Those empanelled will start getting the postings as additional secretaries from November side by side with the 1977 batch officers getting the postings as the secretaries.

Those empanelled from Gujarat are: Sardar Sarovar Nigam managing director S Jagadeesan, Rajesh Kishore, Maheshwar Sahu, Amtiava Bhattacharya, Hara Krushna Dash and Vijay Laxmi Joshi, all currently serving the state government. The only 1980 batch officer from Gujarat to miss the bus is D K Rao, who was embroiled in the sensational case of burning of a girl's body in a hotel 'tandoor' here.

Those in the list from some other states are:

Maharashtra: V Ramani and Swadheen Kshatriya
Rajasthan: Sunil Arora, Gurdial Singh Sandhu and Shyam Agarwal
MP: Swarnamala Rawla and Prabhudayal Meena
UP: Shankar Agarwal, Aradhana Johri, Rajeev Kher and Rakesh Garg
Bihar: Amita Paul, Narendra Kumar Sinha and Arbind Prasad.
J&K: P G Dhar Chakraborty and Ashok Kumar Angurana
Uttarakhand: N Ravi Shankar
Jharkhand: Ms Smita Chugh
Haryana: Chhatar Singh

The complete list is attached below.