Hard to believe as it is, Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in the State continues to run its affairs on patch work or ad-hoc basis. Lighter note apart, while fighting acute shortage of eligible officers, many Matriculates and “spurious” Graduates are making a hay in the unpredictability of the Department otherwise boasting of strengthening Panchayati Raj System in Jammu and Kashmir State. Norms and procedures are violated by the ineligible lot of under qualified ones running the affairs of the Department in the “capacity” of Block Development Officers.
Can there be any category of “Look after BDOs”, SROs 178 and 285 together and in isolation, impliedly provide for that arrangement which is difficult to comprehend. Bottlenecks between Non-Gazetted and Gazetted Service Rules , per these SROs lead to insufficient number of Inspector Panchayats having Graduation and above qualifications to feed 50 percent departmental quota of BDOs in spite of the recent approval by the State Administrative Council to increase the number of Panchayat Inspectors.
On the other hand, there are sufficient number of village level workers and Inspector Panchayats with post Graduate Diploma in Rural Development, Master in Rural Development and PhD in Rural Development, the Government for unknown reasons, is delaying in- corporation of higher professional qualifications in Service Rules (SRO 178 of 2007) for promotion to higher next rank on different analogies. This is what is known as red tape and complicating of issues, remaining struck to notes – counter notes, references and objections resulting in no decision taking place to amend the SRO impeding the smooth functioning of the Department and be content with running it somehow even with undeserving and under qualified personnel. The deficit between the eligible feeding cadre and the requirement has led to the situation in the Department where many Matriculates and “Counterfeit” Graduates from non recognized Universities are looking after the charge of BDOs. The quality of their working needs no comments and the overall performance of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj can better be understood.
The moot question is as to why the amended schedule of SRO 178 which is approved by ARI, GAD, Finance and Law Departments has been kept on hold for the last five years by the officials at the helm of affairs in Administrative Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj ? Is it a ploy to benefit the lot of Matriculates and fake Graduates and post them as BDOs or what they call “Look after BDOs”? An in-depth analysis but nothing short of an inquiry would reveal, besides other loop holes, at what stage 20% quota for Graduates and 5% for PGDRD is there for implementation but nothing of the sort of quota for professional qualifications of MA (RD) and PhD(RD) which has been recommended by the Department itself and approved by competent Departments . Once this anomaly is sorted out, there would be no dearth of eligible feeding cadre to make the Departments run its affairs smoothly.
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