New Delhi, Nov 21: Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh, who is also Minister Incharge DoPT (Department of Personnel & Training) on Tuesday said that DoPT is keen to ensure timely promotions without the slightest delay.
The minister was speaking to a Central Secretariat Rajbhasha Seva Sangathan delegation that called on him at DoPT headquarters. The members of the delegation thanked him for clearing the backlog of delayed promotion cases by ordering mass promotions and requested for similar disposal of remaining cases pertaining to Rajbasha officials.
Assuring that the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel is equally concerned about the timely promotions of government employees in various cadres, Dr Jitendra Singh said, “Earlier this year in the month of June the DoPT had approved the mass promotion of 1,592 officials working in the capacity of ASOs to the post of SOs on adhoc basis with immediate effect.”
The promotions had been expedited on the directions of the Minister Incharge DoPT, Dr Jitendra Singh who personally reviewed the entire process. “Last year alone, about 9,000 mass promotions were made and prior to that the DoPT granted 4,000 promotions in the preceding three years,” he said.
Expressing their gratitude to Dr Jitendra for his personal intervention in approving mass promotions, the members of the delegation demanded the Minister Incharge DoPT review their promotion policy in their cadre as the promotion prospects are less, affecting the morale of the employees.
Dr Singh said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very keen that hardworking and performing officials should be provided with a work-friendly environment and at the same time, be provided with timely service benefits so that they remain motivated to give their best for nation-building.
He said that in the last over nine years, under the guidance of PM Modi, the government has periodically reviewed the longstanding stagnation issues in the various Central Ministries that are a legacy of the past due to pending court cases, lack of vacancies in higher grades and other personnel issues.
“The government is concerned about long stagnation in certain cadres and at certain levels where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of the administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without getting a single promotion,” he said. The DoPT Minister said he has discussed the issue with all the senior officers in the Department and several innovative steps have been initiated to avoid stagnation at the middle and lower rungs of the administration.
In a few of the 4,000 promotions cleared in recent years, the government granted promotions despite the cases being sub-judice, by consulting legal experts and making valid provisions for judicial scrutiny, the minister said.
The union minister said that in order to bring in the Ease of Governance as well as objectivity in empanelment, the government has, in the last nine years, improvised upon the procedures so as to ensure that there are no subjective preferences involved in carrying out the promotions.
The DoPT Minister said that as part of administrative reforms, the government has done away with over 1,600 rules which were either obsolete or had become irrelevant with the passage of time.
“All this is meant not only to ensure effective and timely delivery of outcomes for the public, but also to enable the employees to perform to the best of their ability,” he said.
