At last CBEC issues transfer order of 53 Commissioners
CBEC had done it! They were struggling with it for the last few months - It is of course a herculean task - what with pulls and pushes from all directions - political and official. They were forced to issue a circular that many representations are being received from VIPs and other political sources recommending transfer/posting of officers belonging to Customs and Central Excise Departments. FM has desired that this practice be discouraged. But circulars can't stop lobbyists from functioning and there are some well-connected officers in the department, who can try influencing Barack Obama or the Pope for a transfer.
The Transfer Policy states, "All annual transfer orders shall be normally issued by 30th April and, in any case, not later than 31st May of the year.” And finally they issued the transfer order after office hours on 1st August 2014. Transfer orders are generally issued after dark on a Friday - is it an under cover operation?
53 Commissioners were transferred and maybe 100 Commissioners are unhappy. Except a few many of the Commissioners are totally disillusioned with the Board for the way they are treated in transfers. Can anybody say that considerations other than transfer policy did not influence the transfers? Whatever be the policy and whoever be at the helm of affairs, some people manage to get the postings they want and some unfortunate ones will not get what they desire.
Many officers complain that the senior most officers in the Board are rude, callous and outright inconsiderate. They shout at senior officers like Commissioners and do not even listen to the genuine woes of the officers - that is the reason some of them try political or other sources and the ones who do not have those resources should simply suffer.
Yours is not to question why;
Yours is but to do and die.
While this is the sad story at the level of Commissioners, at the still lower level of Superintendents and Inspectors, the complaint is that these very Commissioners who have faced humiliation in the Board, subject the subordinates to worse humiliation - with the result you have an entire department of employees who are thoroughly unhappy and disgusted with the system - and we have entrusted the onerous task of collecting taxes to them. Thank God the taxes come into the State coffers in spite of them; not because of them.
Once I took a young editorial colleague to a Central Excise office. We met an Additional Commissioner who had unadulterated contempt for his thoroughly useless Commissioner. We met the Commissioner who told us that his Chief Commissioner was a joker. We called on the Chief Commissioner who honestly believed that he was slightly greater than Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh put together and was sorry that the dunces sitting in the Board would not understand taxation or economics. My young colleague understood the Department thoroughly.