Once more, officials were jolted in their guessing game. While effecting a major bureaucratic rejig at the level of Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary & Secretary rank posts a few days ago the NaMo administration also announced C Chandramauli's (IAS:1985:TN) appointment as DOPT Secretary. And this took everyone by surprise. Because every guess was centred only around the appointment of someone from 1983 and 1984 batch IAS officers as a successor to previous DoPT secretary Ajay Mittal (Retd IAS:1982:HP). The rationale was that two posts of DoPT secretary and Expenditure secretary involve the job of continuous interactions with departmental heads; and hence, a convention has come to be established for the appointment of only senior-most officers to these posts. That convention stands broken now - maybe an exception to the rule.