CBEC Commissioners' promotion file goes missing – FIR launched
The frustration among senior Additional Commissioners in the CBEC and then down the line will continue for some time. The promotion of Additional Commissioners as Commissioners was jinxed right from the beginning what with warring groups of Appraisers stalling the promotion on several grounds of disputed seniority and the Board had all these days continued with some ad hoc promotions. You promote a Deputy Commissioner as Joint Commissioner on ad hoc basis and then promote him again on ad hoc basis as Additional Commissioner and then as Commissioner. Ad hoc or otherwise, some happy souls were getting promoted. The Board it seems took the Law Ministry's opinion and even the Finance Minister who is not seen exactly as employee friendly gave his clearance for the promotion of Additional Commissioners as Commissioners and that would have started a chain of promotions.
And that's when the file performed the missing act. An important file is lost from the hallowed precincts of the North Block. It is learnt that an FIR has been filed at the Parliament Street Police Station.
It is not as if the file cannot be reconstructed – all the information is available somewhere – but the promotion process gets delayed and frustration mounts.
It seems that nearly 400 Group A posts are vacant in the Department and if these vacancies continue for a long time, some Auditor can point out and rightly so that the Department is running very well without these officers and so these posts can be abolished. And if you conduct a study of the Commissionerates where there are no regular Commissioners, you will find that the performance is far better than in the Commissionerates with regular Commissioners, quipped a Commissioner!