Vague govt rule leads to mix-up of seniority

A vague rule of the government has left around 100 senior Central cadre officials saddled with a monthly salary lesser than their juniors in the same service, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 6, 2013, 23:52:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A vague rule of the government has left around 100 senior Central cadre officials saddled with a monthly salary lesser than their juniors in the same service.

It was effected by the government’s acceptance of the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendation that those Central cadre officers, who were two or more years senior to the IAS officers but had not been promoted, be upgraded.

The promotion on non-functional basis was to be from the date of posting of the IAS officers in that particular grade at the Centre, meaning that those officers would have got same salary and perks without equivalent position.

It is applicable for officers who have seniority of being posted at joint secretary and deputy secretary levels.

Different cadre controlling authorities since 2009 implemented the non-functional upgradation on the basis of a rule circulated by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

But, the rule failed to give an option to an eligible officer on whether he or she would like to avail of the promotion before or after the next increment.

It meant that a particular officer receiving non-functional promotion in February of a year would receive less salary than his junior promoted in October of the same year.

It was because the officer promoted in February would have to forgo annual increment due in July as result of new salary fixation.

The new salary of the officer getting promoted in October would be fixed taking into account the July increment.

Many officers of revenue, statistics and information services have asked their cadre controlling ministries to fix their salary after the annual increment to maintain their service seniority.

Swamped by requests to undo the unusual discrimination, some of the Central cadre controlling ministries — Information and Broadcasting, Statistics and Programme Implementation and Customs and Income Tax — have now asked the DoPT to clarify whether the request of these officers for pay fixation from the date of next increment was in order or not.

Many officers affected by the rule say that it would create confusion over seniority of officers in non-IAS Central cadres if not rectified.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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