NEW DELHI, July 24: An IAS, IFS and IPS officer can be denied central deputation if he is facing graft charges or has defaulted in submitting annual property returns, as per the government’s new policy.
It has also been decided to relax selection criteria further to ensure adequate representation of officers belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women and the North East at the central level.
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has finalised new guidelines on central deputation for Joint Secretary and equivalent posts for officers belonging to Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFoS), among others.
“Vigilance denied officer shall not be empaneled, which means that they exhaust their first chance of empanelment. The cases of officers who have defaulted in filing property returns shall also be treated as vigilance denied, for a period of one year for every default.
“Adverse impact of default in filing of Immovable Property Returns would be one year applicable to the empanelment due in the year of default,” a DoPT directive said.
In case the selection process does not lead to adequate representation of categories like SC, ST, women, particular state cadres, North East among others in the panel, the criteria for empanelment would be suitably relaxed to give due representation to these sections, it said.
The directive said that empanelment should be considered
not as a reflection of the intrinsic merit or otherwise of an officer but the suitability of an officer to occupy senior levels in the central government.
“There shall be separate experts panel in connection with the empanelment at the level of Joint Secretary. The experts panel will be required to examine the Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs), year-wise in detail for each batch and will give their own assessment of the gradings of officers for each year, which will be taken into account by the Civil Services Board (CSB) for making recommendations,” it said.
Also, the officer would be assessed on a scale of ‘9’ (outstanding) on the basis of their grades in ACRs, it said. For the purpose of evaluating the overall performance, numerical values are assigned to outstanding, very good, good and average grade officers.
CSB would also take into account the experience profile of officers, carefully scrutinise the ACR dossier and evaluate such qualities as general reputation, merit, competence, leadership and a flair for participating in the policy-making process to recommend the list of officers to be included in the panel, the revised policy directive said.
For the purpose of evaluating the overall performance of an officer, ACRs during the 10-year period, immediately preceding and inclusive of the cut off year, would be taken into account, it said.
An officer needs to serve 17 years of service to become eligible for JS empanelment at the Centre, it said. (PTI)
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