The 'Empanelment Guidelines' (point no. 08) of Govt of India reads: "In case the selection process does not lead to the adequate representation of categories like SC/ST, women, the Northeast and particular State cadres in the panel, the criteria for empanelment would be suitably relaxed to give due representation to these categories." In the light of the above-mentioned provision,  the non-empanelment of SC officer Ajoy Kumar (IAS:1984:BH) as secretary/equivalent has come as a surprise. He is currently serving at the center as Additional Secretary, National Commission for Minorities. It is pointed out that he was the only eligible IAS officer of the 1984 batch from the SC community and if he were empaneled, he would have become the first SC IAS officer from Bihar & Jharkhand to reach the secretary rank. However, he failed to get in the empanelment list even though he has more than three years of service left. It may be mentioned that two IAS officers of the 1984 batch from the SC community, P C Dhiman (HP cadre) & P Marapandian (Kerala cadre), were out of the consideration zone on account of residual service. Dhiman retired and Marapandian will be retiring on 31st of this month. Fortuitously, Hiralal Samaria (IAS:AP) became the single IAS officer from the SC community of the 1985 batch who was empanelled as Secretary.