DF Govt to even the scale for state-cadre employees

MUMBAI, OCT 25: Better prospects and promotion avenues are on cards for state-cadre employees as the Congress-led Democratic Front governm...

MUMBAI, OCT 25: Better prospects and promotion avenues are on cards for state-cadre employees as the Congress-led Democratic Front government has decided to reduce the strength of Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service officials.

“Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has given specific instructions to Chief Secretary Arun Bongirwar to take concrete steps to reduce the strength of the IAS, IPS and IFS officials so that the state-cadre employees will get opportunity of promotion,” a senior official said.

The unexpected direction came when the Cabinet was discussing the upgradation of the post of director to director general of Health Services. Though there was strong opposition to the promotion of controversial director Subhash Salunke, the proposal was approved on the grounds that the state cadre officials should get promotions.

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The Chief Minister’s contention was that the IAS officials would get time-bound promotions irrespective of whether they were eligible for the post, it was available or otherwise. “On occasions, it was found that a post held by an IAS officials is upgraded or downgraded to meet the convenience of the IAS official, but that does not happen in the case of state-cadre employees. The Chief Minister feels that such a disparity should be removed forthwith in the larger interest of the state-cadre employees,” the official added.

Elaborating, the official said so far the post of Director of Agriculture or Sugar was held by an official of the rank of Deputy Secretary. However, it was found that the same post was upgraded to the rank of Secretary only for an IAS official. Similarly, in the case of the post of Director General (Information and Public Relations) that should be occupied by an official of the rank of Deputy Secretary, was, however, currently held by the Principal Secretary.

“Such flexibility is never shown in the case of state-cadre employees. Then the files are deliberately help either by the Finance Department or General Administration Department for minor reasons. Deshmukh feels that it should be corrected and the interest of the state-employees should be protected at any cost,” the official added.

Currently, the departments of Irrigation, Public Works and Law and Judiciary are headed by the officials of the same department.

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At the moment, there are 356 IAS officials in Maharashtra, while the neighbouring states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have less posts. “If the Chief Minister is keen to remove the disparity, he should deploy a study team to these states. Only those posts which involve Centre-state relations or implementation of legislations promulgated by the Centre, are given to the IAS officials, while the remaining posts, even up to the rank of Secretary are held by state-cadre officials,” a senior official said.