Election Year Challenge: 15 DCs among 22 Punjab IAS officers to be away for training
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ March 20,2026
In the election year, when the Punjab government is expected to remain engaged in implementing pro-public schemes, as many as 15 Deputy Commissioners (DCs) may be away on official training, potentially impacting administrative functioning at the district level. Earlier around two dozen bureaucrats are deputed as election observers in the upcoming assembly elections in five States/UTs
A total of 22 IAS officers of the Punjab cadre have been nominated for the mandatory Phase III Mid-Career Training Programme (MCTP) scheduled from May 11 to June 5, 2026, at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.
According to the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, the programme is mandatory and serves as a prerequisite for empanelment to the Junior Administrative Grade (Level 12). Officials said this will be the first opportunity for 2018-batch officers, the second for 2017-batch officers, and the third and final chance for 2016-batch officers. Officers from the 2010–2015 batches have been nominated on a case-to-case basis.
As per the official list, the 22 officers include one from the 2013 batch, two from 2014, one from 2015, three from 2016, eight from 2017, and seven from 2018. Of these, 15 officers are currently serving as Deputy Commissioners across the state. Out of these 22, 15 are posted as deputy commissioners (in bold letters):
Syed Sehrish Asgar 2013
Himanshu Aggarwal 2014
Komal Mittal 2014
Aashika Jain 2015
Amarpreet Kaur Sandhu 2016
Aaditya Dachalwal 2016
Amit Kumar Panchal 2016
Himanshu Jain 2017
Rahul 2017
Gautam Jain 2017
Sagar Setia 2017
Anupam Kaler 2017
Rahul Chaba 2017
Dalwinderjit Singh 2017
Sona Thind 2017
Vimmi Bhullar 2018
Tidke Viraj Shyamkarn 2018
T Benith 2018
Navjot Kaur 2018
Sukhjeet Pal Singh 2018
Ankurjeet Singh 2018
Varjeet Walia 2018
With district heads attending training soon after election duties in March and April, the state administration may need to make temporary arrangements to ensure continuity in governance during this period.
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