Finally, Centre okays enhanced allowances under 7th Central Pay Commission; 10 major changes

AFTER 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) recommended abolition of 53 allowances, the Central government on Wednesday decided not to touch 12 of those allowances, apart from continuing with three of the 37 allowances recommended to be subsumed by the 7th CPC, as separate identities. The total financial implication for the enhanced allowances, as approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, will be to the tune of ₹30,748.23 crore per year out of which ₹1,448.23 is on account of government's tweaking of the 7th CPC recommendations on allowances. But the delay in announcing the allowance hike (pay was hiked with effect from January 1, 2016) also means some savings for the government, as allowances are not doled out retrospectively unlike the increased amount of a hiked pay. As of now, 7.5 lakh employees will benefit from enhanced HRA, Siachen allowance to get doubled; dress allowance for SPG personnel will increase etc. Here are the 10 changes for Central government employees:

When a Twitter algorithm detects riots, violence faster than police; more about the Cardiff University study

RESEARCHERS in UK’s Wales have come out with a Twitter-monitoring algorithm that can identify riots even before citizens actually report about those unrest to police, according to media reports published in UK’s newspapers and elsewhere. Reports say, the model has recently been tested on the basis of data gathered from Twitter during 2011 riots occurred in the city of London. That the algorithm could identify…

CBI promotes 12 of its IPS officers to the rank of DIG; 2 promotions conditional; Full List

LAST week, India’s premier investigating agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), promoted 12 of its officers -- five belonging to 2002 batch IPS and remaining seven of 2003 batch, to the rank of deputy inspector general (DIG) of police. For two officers, however, the promotion is conditional. Here’s the list of officers promoted to DIG rank:

5 non-IAS officers get berth as deputy secretary, director in ministries like home, finance, mines; Full List

LAST Friday, the government announced the appointment of five officers belonging to various Central Group “A” services in the ministries such as home affairs, mines, commerce and also in the department of investment and public asset management that comes under the ministry of finance. None of them was incidentally an IAS. Here below are the five deputy secretary, director level appointments:

5 IAS officers of 1984 batch get promoted as special secretary; Full List

THE Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on Wednesday approved in-situ up-gradation of five IAS officers, all belonging to 1984 batch, to the level of special secretary by temporarily upgrading the posts held by them. Special secretaries are at a notch below union secretaries but their salary and perks are the same with that of secretaries. The officers who will now be special secretaries are the following:

GOI Secretary Reshuffle: Urban development secretary Rajiv Gauba to be new home secretary; Aruna Sundararajan is new telecom secretary

Home secretary designate Rajiv Gauba

IN A major secretary-level reshuffle announced on Wednesday night, the Central government appointed urban development secretary and 1982 batch Jharkhand cadre IAS Rajiv Gauba as the next home secretary with effect from August 30 when incumbent Rajiv Mehrishi retires. Among 17 such new secretary-ranked appointments and lateral transfers, there are ones like the shifting of culture secretary NK Sinha as information and broadcasting ministry secretary and the appointment of electronics and information technology secretary Ms Aruna Sundararajan as new telecom secretary, an important post lying vacant. Here below is the list of 17 new appointments:

Agriculture adviser needed in Embassy of India, Brussels; Who’s eligible for the post?

AN ADVISER (agriculture and Marine Products) is needed in Embassy of India, Brussels for a period of three years, and deputy secretary and director level officers are free to apply for the post. As DoPT has written to all chief secretaries, the applicant-officer must have worked for at least two years at the Centre under the Central Staffing Scheme, and should have experience in agriculture and...

Ethics to Leadership: List of 13 training programmes IAS, IPS, IFoS etc. need to undertake in FY 2017-18

FROM investigating economic crimes in financial markets and inner engineering leadership programme to subjects like ethics in public services, the All India Service (IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service officers), Group 'A' officers working under Central Staffing Scheme and officers belonging to Central Secretariat Service (CSS) etc. will be imparted one-week-long in-service training this fiscal, 2017-18. The training will be imparted in various institutes across India — Coimbatore-based Isha (Foundation) Yoga Centre and Bengaluru-based Art of Living Foundation to institutes such as Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The following is the list of the programmes and the names of the institutes where the training sessions will be held:

Indian diplomats lead pre-Yoga Day sessions held across the globe; Yoga lights up at UN

INDIAN embassy in Washington DC releases this photo of Ambassador Navtej Sarna participating in a Yoga session ahead of the International Day of Yoga on June 21. In a Twitter post, the embassy then quotes this 1980 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer as saying: “Healthy individuals lead to healthy societies and thereby global peace”. Hundreds of people practised Yoga at the historic National Mall. Sarna is also an author with the novel…

21 new joint secretaries appointed; only 4 belong to IAS; income-tax officer finds berth in ministry of earth sciences

THE Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on Thursday approved the appointment of 21 joint secretaries and also prematurely repatriated a Kerala cadre IAS officer. Significantly, out of 21 new joint secretaries, only four belong to IAS. The new joint secretaries include four Indian Defence Accounts Service (IDAS) officers and two each from IRS-IT and Indian Forest Service (IFoS). Also, a postal service officer has become joint secretary in the department of agriculture and an officer belonging to the income-tax department is placed as joint secretary in the ministry of earth sciences. Here are the details of 21 new JS appointments and one premature repatriation: