BHUBANESWAR: In a clear violation of rules of reservation, the Finance department has given promotion of to 41 reserved categories officers of the Odisha Tax and Audit Service (OT&AS) to the rank of Odisha Finance Service (OFS).
The reserved categories officers, 21 belonging to Scheduled Castes and 20 from Scheduled Tribes, have been promoted against unreserved (UR) posts depriving equal number of deserving candidates from the general category.
The Finance department showed the largesse to the SC and ST officers when all of them could have been easily accommodated against the existing vacancies reserved from them.
The department has done a fundamental mistake by accommodating the 41 OT&AS officers against UR posts when they have been selected for government jobs in various departments under the rules of reservation and later promoted to OT&AS cadre under the same principles.
Odisha Finance Service Rule provides that 50 per cent of the vacant post in OFS-I (Junior Branch) posts are to be filled of from among eligible OT&AS officers in a calender year.
Taking into account 198 vacancies as on January 1, 2019 in the OFS-I carder, departmental promotion committee held on February 27, 2019 recommended the names of 147 officers even as 182 officers were eligible for promotion.
As the DPC recommended promotion on the basis of merit cum suitability with due regard to seniority accommodating 41 reserved categories employees against UR post, equal number of general category officers fulfilling all eligible criteria for promotion were deprived of career advancement due to wrong interpretation of settled laws pronounced by the Supreme Court in various cases relating to reservation in promotion.
Of the total 198 vacancies, 31 posts were reserved for SC and 41 posts for ST leaving 126 posts for general category employees.
The DPC preferred to promote only 3 officers from SC category and 19 from ST leaving a vacancy of 28 and 22 posts respectively.
Recently, the Home department had made similar mistake in the matter of promotion of assistant section officers (ASOs) to the post of desk officers (DOs).
After this newspaper exposed the fallacies of the DPC in interpreting the rules of reservation in a wrong way, the department issued promotion order on the basis of apex court judgment and followed the principle of post-based roster allowing specific slots to ST, SC as well as general candidates as per there entitlement within the overall ceiling limit for promotion.
List of violations
21 officers belonging to Scheduled Castes and 20 from Scheduled Tribes have been promoted against UR posts
Odisha Finance Service Rule provides that 50 pc of vacant post in OFS-I are to be filled from among eligible OT&AS officers in a calender year
Of 198 vacancies, 31 posts were reserved for SC and 41 posts for ST leaving 126 posts for general category
The DPC preferred to promote only 3 officers from
SC category and 19 from ST leaving a vacancy of 28 and 22 posts respectively