Five names are ahead in the race for the next secretary in the Cabinet. These include Alok Rawat from the 1977 Manipur cadre; Naved Masood from the 1977 UP cadre, Madhav Lal from the 1977 batch of Jammu & Kashmir cadre, P K Sinha from the 1977 UP batch and Sourav Chandra from the 1978 batch of the UP cadre.