[Interview 2015] UPSC Board Member Profiles – Smt. Alka Sirohi

Alka Sirohi

Mrs. Alka Sirohi joined the Indian Administrative Service in July, 1974. A post graduate in Western History, Smt. Sirohi is trained in management and issues related to sustainable development.

She has served in various capacities in Madhya Pradesh, as SDM, Collector and District Magistrate, Additional Secretary  (Personnel), Administrative Reforms and Training and Additional Secretary, Housing and Environment, along with Executive Director, Environmental Planning & Coordination Organization and Director, General Disaster Management Institute.

She has also served as Commissioner, Higher Education and has been Secretary/Principal Secretary in the State Government over a span of 15 years from 1991 to 2005, playing a key role in policy formulation in vital sectors of government like Agriculture, Cooperation and Command Area Development, Women and Child Development (where she drafted the first state policy for empowerment of women), Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection; Health and Family Welfare and Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation; Commercial Taxes.

She also served as Development Commissioner and ex-officio Principal Secretary, Panchayats and Rural Development, where a number of systems were devised for ensuring a high quality of rural roads, which were subsequently adopted in other states also.

In the course of her career with the State Government, she took up a number of new innovations in the field of health including the very successful programme of universal immunization in her District in 1981 which aimed at coverage of all children below 5 years of age, against five vaccine preventable diseases including polio.The approach adopted was similar to that subsequently adopted in the modern day national Pulse Polio Programme.

In Government of India she has served in the Department of Defence Production and subsequently as Additional Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs, where she was closely associated with the designing and launching of a multimedia campaign for consumer awareness titled ‘Jago Grahak Jago’.

She has been Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution in Government of India from September, 2008 till October, 2010, and prepared a comprehensive draft of a Food Security Law.

She was Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training from November, 2010, which charge she was holding till January, 2012.

During this period,she was closely associated with the drafting of several anti-corruption legislation. She has a long experience of Personnel Management.

You can read more about her at http://www.babusofindia.com/2010/11/alka-sirohi-1974-batch-madhya-pradesh.html