In compliance with a Supreme Court directive, the Odisha Government has retrospectively appointed 17 officers to the Orissa Administrative Service (OAS) Class-II cadre with effect from February 5, 1999. The appointments, notified on February 7, 2026, by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department, resolve a long-pending litigation stemming from the Odisha Civil Services Examination (OCSE) of 1997.
The notification follows the Supreme Court’s order dated July 25, 2025, in an interlocutory application arising from Writ Petition (Civil) No. 140/2013 filed by Srikanta Kumar Behura and others against the State of Odisha. The court had directed the state to reconsider the cadre allocation of certain candidates from the 1997 merit list who had been placed in other services despite qualifying for OAS.
The 17 officers have been appointed against newly created supernumerary posts in the pay scale of Rs 6,500–10,500 (as per ORSP Rules, 1998). Importantly, the appointees will not receive any arrear financial benefits; their pay will be fixed notionally. Two retired officers in the list — Shyam Prasad Rout and Siddhartha Sankar Pani — will, however, be entitled to revised pensionary and retirement benefits based on the notional pay fixation.
Their inter-se seniority has been fixed in the final gradation list of OAS-A (Junior Branch) officers as on January 1, 2011, in accordance with guidelines issued by the General Administration & Public Grievance Department.
The officers appointed are:
- Piyusa Kanta Pani (presently Director (Finance), OFDC Ltd.)
- Sabir Kumar Panda (Addl. RCS, Director, State Training Institute for Cooperative Development)
- Satya Narayan Panda (Addl. Commissioner, CT & GST, Jajpur)
- Sushanta Kumar Panda (Addl. RCS, MD, Aska Cooperative Sugar Industries Ltd.)
- Gayatri Patnaik (DRCS, O/o RCS (O))
- Phalguni Sahay Nayak (Dy. Director, Skill Development-cum-Employment Officer, Ganjam)
- Shyam Prasad Rout (Retired; former Registrar, Institute of Mathematics and Applications)
- Srikanta Kumar Behura (Dy. IGR, Southern Range, Berhampur)
- Smita Mohanty (Dy. Director, Directorate of Culture)
- Ramesh Chandra Panda (Dy. Collector, Kendrapara)
- Suraj Kumar Pattnaik (ADM, Sundargarh)
- Sucheta Mohapatra (General Manager, OAIC Ltd.)
- Haripriya Dash (Joint Director, DTE&T, Cuttack)
- Priyabrata Padhi (Joint Secretary, CMGC UoT as Spl. LAO, Keonjhar)
- Amiya Kumar Rout (PS to Dy. Chief Whip, OLA)
- Bijaylaxmi Patsani (Joint Secretary, OSSSC)
- Siddhartha Sankar Pani (Retired; took VRS)
All officers belong to the unreserved category and were earlier allocated to services such as OFS, OCS, OES, Sub-Registrar, and OSCS.
The notification, signed by Additional Chief Secretary Arabinda Kumar Padhee, explicitly states that the cadre allocation is in strict compliance with the Supreme Court orders and “shall not be cited as a precedent for future cases.”
The development brings closure to a dispute that dates back nearly three decades, offering belated recognition to the merit of the 1997 OCSE selectees while safeguarding the state’s financial liabilities through the denial of arrears.
