Sudhi Ranjan Mohanty's appointment as the new chief secretary of MP is said to have disappointed a powerful group of civil servants who are said to have been close to the former CM, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Indianmandarins has learnt that as soon as Mohanty's name started doing the rounds, serious efforts were made to scuttle his appointment including a petition to RaGa's office.

However, the new government wanted to compensate Mohanty for having suffered for being close to the Digvijay Singh government.

Mohanty was bypassed in the race for chief secretaryship in 2016 when the BJP government preferred BP Singh, two batches his junior.

Since he joined the IAS at the age of 22, and so if his promotion had not been delayed, he would have continued in the post of CS for four years, scuttling the chances of scores of others.