Union power secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla appears set to become the next home secretary with the government on Wednesday appointing him officer on special duty in Amit Shah’s ministry as part of a bureaucratic shuffle.

Incumbent Rajiv Gauba retires on August 31. Officials said an OSD is appointed for a smooth transition of charge.

Among the other significant changes was the appointment of Atanu Chakraborty, a 1985-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, as the new economic affairs secretary in place of Subhash Chandra Garg, who will replace Bhalla as power secretary.

Chakraborty was secretary with the department of investment and public asset management in the finance ministry.

If Bhalla, a 1984-batch IAS officer from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, is appointed home secretary as expected, he will have a fixed two-year tenure till August 2021.

His appointment as OSD comes at a crucial time, with the Centre focusing on the conflict areas in Kashmir and Maoist-affected Chhattisgarh.

The appointments committee of the cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has cleared Bhalla’s appointment with immediate effect. He will report directly to Shah.

Garg assumes his new office with the Centre looking to introduce several reforms in the proposed national tariff policy, including penalties on gratuitous load-shedding, not allowing losses of more than 15 per cent as a pass-through in tariff, and limiting cross-subsidies.

A 1983-batch IAS officer from the Rajasthan cadre, Garg had been appointed economic affairs secretary in June 2017.

The changes come at a time the finance ministry has initiated internal discussions on sovereign bonds and on a strategy on achieving the divestment target, among other measures, to boost economic growth.

Anil Kumar Khachi, a 1986-batch IAS officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, will be the new divestment secretary, succeeding Chakraborty.

Anshu Prakash, a 1986-batch IAS officer from the Union Territory cadre, will be telecommunication secretary while his batch-mate from the Bengal cadre, R.S. Shukla, will be parliamentary affairs secretary.

Prakash will take charge from August 1 as the incumbent secretary, Aruna Sundarajan, retires by the end of this month.

Ravi Capoor, a 1986-batch IAS officer from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, has been appointed textiles secretary while batch-mate Atul Chaturvedi will be secretary, animal husbandry and dairying.

Another Gujarat-cadre officer, P.D. Vaghela, of the 1986-batch, will be the new pharmaceuticals secretary.

Subash Chandra, 1986-batch IAS officer from the Karnataka cadre, has been made a special secretary in the department of defence. Guruprasad Mohapatra, a 1986-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has been appointed secretary in the department of promotion of industry and internal trade.

This is the first major bureaucratic shuffle carried out by the Modi government during its second term in office.