To tone up the bureaucratic apparatus and weed out officials of doubtful integrity and efficiency, the government has asked all its departments to identify such public servants and move proposals for their premature retirement.
The move by the Department of Personnel and Training follows a meeting
chaired by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha recently on mechanisms to be
adopted to ensure probity among government servants.
The departments have been asked to invoke provisions of Fundamental Rule (56J) to compulsorily retire such officials.
Under Fundamental Rule 56(J), the government has the "absolute right" to
retire, if necessary in public interest, any Group A and B employee,
who has joined service before the age of 35 and has crossed the age of
50.
Under the rules, a C Group government servant, who has crossed the age
of 55 can be retired prematurely but action can be taken only if the
official is suspected to be corrupt or ineffective.
Group A comprise officers of All India Services like IAS, IPS, Indian
Forest Service, IRS, while Group B consists of non-gazetted officers and
Group C clerical and ministerial staff.
However, action can be taken only against such officers whose annual
increment have stood frozen for a few years and have not got promotion
in preceding five years.
The meeting emphasised rotation of officers on sensitive and non-sensitive posts and their review and screening under FR 56(J).
The DoPT has been asked to monitor implementation and obtain compliance from all ministries in this regard.
"As this activity is to be completed in a
time bound manner, it is requested that priority attention may be paid
to it and inputs sent to the internal vigilance section at the very
earliest," the notice, sent to all ministries, said.
Source : The Economic Times
