BHUBANESWAR: At a time when the State Government is framing a new set of rules to give out of turn promotion to its employees doing exceptional performance and furthering ease of public service delivery, many efficient Government servants are denied career benefits due to abnormal delay in grant of promotion.
A majority of the Government employees (of about 351 cadres) are suffering silently without career progression for years due to the unusual delay in holding meeting of the Department Promotion Committee (DPC).
The only exception is officers belonging to the All India Services (AIS) such as IAS, IPS and IFS who get timely promotion without fail.“While selection committee meets unfailingly in December every year to pick up suitable officers belonging to AIS cadres from the select list for promotion, the case is not the same for other cadre employees,” said a officer of the General Administration department dealing with promotion matters.
There are cases that some Government servants, who have been denied career progression for years, were handed over promotion letter on the eve of their retirement after sustained coaxing to their higher-ups for this last ‘favour’.
“It is ironic that a section officer of Home department dealing with promotion matters had to retire in January this year without getting promotion which he was entitled to long back,” said one of his colleagues in the State Secretariat.
As per criteria for promotion rules, vacancy including existing and consequential are assessed for a calendar year. Suitable officers are picked up by the DPC in January for promotion against vacancy likely to arise during the calender year.The DPC should sit in January so that the select list shall remain valid till December 31 of that year and the selected officers will get promotion as and when the vacancy arises.
However, the rule is not followed despite clear instructions from the Government to all the departments. In deviation of the rule, the Home department holds DPC for employees of the Odisha Secretariat Service (OSS) cadre in October. Same was the case for the engineering cadre.
“The DPC is not meeting for years in some cases under the pretext that gradation list is not finalised or existing vacancy are not available. Denial of promotion in time is inviting litigations as many employees dragging the Government to court of law,” informed sources said.
The Steel and Mines department has deliberately held up the promotion of officials of the Directorates of Mining and Geology despite huge vacancy. The Geology Directorate has a vacancy of 401 against the sanctioned strength of 644 and both the directorates are headless for along time.
CM issues order to dept heads
Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday directed all departments to complete the process of promotion of low and middle ranking government employees by December 31 every year and give promotion to deserving candidates by January 1. The directive will also be applicable to promotion of employees at the district level. The Chief Minister has also directed department heads and district collectors to send reports on action taken in this regard to the Chief Secretary by December 31 evening. Naveen warned that department heads will be held responsible in case of delay in the promotion of eligible employees.