SC adverse observations - Need for proper selection of Officers for sensitive posts - Former CBEC Member writes to FM
FORMER CBEC Member, SK Choudhury has in a letter to the FM suggested that it is time for the Ministry to identify officers found fit for being sent home under Rule 56J which has not been invoked against any Group ‘A” officer in the last over twenty five years. He tells the FM that some of the officers facing prosecutions and included in the list of “Officers with Doubtful Integrity (ODI) are being rewarded with plum postings including in the DRI making mockery of its own policy which mandates that officers in ODI list should not be assigned any sensitive charge. One of them, an Additional Commissioner level officer had the temerity to refuse to join when posted to what is considered to be a non-sensitive charge and such is his clout that flaunting his connections he continues to be in an important executive charge in a metro city. And no questions are asked.
Though the immediate provocation for the Former Member to write to the FM is the recent judgement of the Supreme Court in its recent judgment on 21-3-2013 on the role of certain customs officials in the serial bomb blasts of March 1993.
He has made several suggestions to the FM to find officers of integrity for sensitive posts.
The anguish of a former Member at the tarnished image of his former department is understandable, but transfer has become a major commercial activity and those who want to buy the posts know how to do it, whatever be the currency.