With Renu Raj set to take over as the District Collector of Alappuzha, 10 of the 14 districts in Kerala will now be helmed by women IAS officers.
Ms. Raj succeeds A. Alexander to the post following her recent assignment as Director, Urban Affairs. Ms. Raj, a doctor by profession, had grabbed headlines when she stood second at the national level in the 2014 Civil Services examinations.
Other districts that currently have women officers as district collectors are Thiruvananthapuram (Navjot Khosa), Kollam (Afsana Parveen), Pathanamthitta (Divya S. Iyer), Kottayam (P. K. Jayasree), Idukki (Sheeba George), Thrissur (Haritha V. Kumar), Palakkad (Mrunmayi Joshi), Wayanad (A. Geetha) and Kasaragod (Bhandari Swagat Ranveerchand).
The bureaucratic reshuffle in July 2021 had propelled four women officers to the post of District Collector.
Haritha V. Kumar, the present Thrissur collector, was the national topper in the 2012 Civil Services exams, becoming the first Keralite to grab the top spot after a gap of over 20 years.
Two of the three awards presented to the best District Collectors during the Revenue Day celebrations earlier this week had also gone to women collectors – Ms. Khosa, who took over as Thiruvananthapuram Collector in 2020, and Ms. Joshi, the Palakkad Collector. The third award went to Mr. Alexander, the outgoing Alappuzha Collector.
