Deptts asked to show urgency towards Art 226 cases
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, June 24: Chief Secretary of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir Dr Arun Kumar Mehta has issued directions to the General Administration Department to make Regular Departmental Action (RDA) monitoring portal operational before June 30 as large number of such cases are still pending in various departments.
As per the document available with EXCELSIOR, the Chief Secretary while chairing a high-level meeting on March 10, 2023 had taken serious note of slow paced enquiries, long-pending and inconclusive RDA cases in various departments. Accordingly, he had directed that the process to conduct the RDAs need to be strictly in consonance with the standing instructions.
The issue again came up for discussion in a meeting of all the Administrative Secretaries held few days back and after detailed analysis of the follow-up action on the earlier directions, the Chief Secretary expressed concern over long-pending and inconclusive RDA cases in various departments.
He has directed the General Administration Department to make RDA monitoring portal operational by the end of current month positively so as to track the progress on such cases pending with the departments on regular basis, official sources told EXCELSIOR.
“The portal will help the Government in identifying the causes behind delay in completion of RDA cases and slackness, if any, at the level of Inquiry Officers so that necessary action is taken against them also”, sources said, adding “the Chief Secretary has once again reiterated that the Administrative Secretaries and Heads of the Departments should take periodical review of the departmental inquiries pending at various stages”.
Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary has directed the General Administration Department to carry out manpower audit to facilitate suitable deployment of surplus staff, sources said, adding “he has also expressed concern regarding virtually no effort in this direction by various departments”.
In the month of January this year, the Government had issued directions for early start of manpower audit in all the departments as similar exercise in respect of Secretariat Subordinate Service employees has yielded encouraging results in the context of effective utilization of available human resources.
Moreover, all the Administrative Secretaries have been directed by the Chief Secretary to expedite processing of cases under Article 226 of Civil Services Regulations. “It has been noted with deep concern by the Chief Secretary that many departments have shown no urgency regarding these cases”, sources informed.
“This is notwithstanding the fact that Government had long time back directed all the departments to ensure that all cases falling under the ambit of Article 226 of the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services Regulations are identified and timely processed to remove the non-performing/deadwood employees”, sources said.
It is pertinent to mention here that the employees who indulge in illegal activities, remain unauthorizedly absent from duties for a considerable period of time, under-perform and are penalized in departmental enquiries and found involved in corruption and criminal cases and have doubtful integrity are generally considered for compulsory retirement under Article 226 but either after being given three months notice in advance or three months pay and allowance in lieu of such notice. Such a Government servant gets pensionary benefits admissible under these Rules on the basis of qualifying service put in on the date of such retirement.
During the meeting of Administrative Secretaries, the National e-Governance Service Delivery rankings also came up for discussion and it was informed that with the addition of 600 compliances, departments are now required to meet 1358 compliances for mandatory services for which they need to make a focused attempt in a time bound manner.
Accordingly, Chief Secretary directed all the concerned departments to ensure overall compliances of all assessment parameters provided by NeSDA to achieve a higher compliance score which would in turn help in improving the NeSDA ranking. The Commissioner Secretary IT Department is also under instruction to monitor the upcoming NeSDA assessment scheduled by ending June.
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