DoT Transfers 13 SAG-Level ITS Officers to New Postings Across States

The Department of Telecommunications has transferred 13 Senior Administrative Grade officers of the Indian Telecommunication Service to new postings spanning the department's headquarters, technical wings and Licensed Service Area offices across ten states and Delhi. The transfer order affects officers who oversee telecom regulatory and licensing functions at the state level, giving the reshuffle wide geographic reach in a single notification.

Two of the transferred officers, Jitendra Khare and Sandeep Kumar Singhal, have been posted at DoT headquarters, placing them closer to policy formulation on telecom licensing and spectrum matters at the national level. Asit Kadayan and Jeetesh Sharma will join the Telecommunication Engineering Centre, the DoT's technical standards body responsible for telecom equipment testing and certification, while Brajendra Kumar has been posted to the National Centre for Communication Security, which handles telecom network security functions.

The remaining officers have been assigned to head Licensed Service Area offices across the country: Mahander Singh Yadav to Andhra Pradesh, Rajeev Yadav to UP West, Arun Kumar to Delhi, Anil Kumar Gehlot to Gujarat, R. Babu Srinivasa Kumar to Tamil Nadu, Vinay K. Jambhali to Karnataka, Anil Kumar Agrawal to Assam, and Beeran Prajapati to Jammu & Kashmir. LSA heads are responsible for telecom licensing compliance, spectrum monitoring and enforcement action against unauthorised telecom equipment within their assigned state or circle.

The Indian Telecommunication Service is the specialised central service that staffs technical and administrative posts within the Department of Telecommunications, and SAG-level officers occupy the senior rung of the service, typically with two to three decades of service behind them, before further elevation to Higher Administrative Grade and apex-level postings. Postings to LSA head roles carry direct enforcement responsibility, including oversight of telecom towers, spectrum usage and coordination with state police on matters such as illegal signal boosters and unauthorised network equipment.

The reshuffle comes as the Department of Telecommunications continues to work through implementation of the Telecommunications Act, 2023, which restructured licensing and spectrum allocation processes and increased the compliance workload on LSA offices, particularly around satellite communication authorisations and spectrum assignment for emerging services. LSA-level officers have taken on an expanded enforcement role as the department has pushed states to crack down on unauthorised telecom equipment and grey-market signal boosters.

Postings to NCCS and TEC, where four of the 13 officers have been assigned, reflect the department's continuing focus on network security and equipment certification, both of which have taken on greater priority following government directives on domestic sourcing of telecom equipment and security clearances for network gear from certain foreign vendors.

The transfer order takes effect immediately, and the affected officers are expected to take charge of their new postings within the standard relief period applicable to central service transfers, typically a matter of a few weeks depending on handover requirements at the outgoing posting.

Officers moving to LSA charges will need to familiarise themselves with pending enforcement matters and licensing applications specific to their assigned state, since each LSA maintains its own backlog of compliance cases that do not automatically transfer with the incoming officer's briefing. DoT has not indicated whether this round of transfers is linked to any broader restructuring of LSA jurisdictions, and officials described it as part of the department's routine periodic rotation of SAG-level officers, similar to reshuffles carried out at roughly annual intervals across the ITS cadre's senior ranks.