INDIAN bureaucrats following the Chinese model in almost every policy, be it SEZ or infrastructure, must take note the dark side of the Chinese babudom as well. Over 1,068 people including top state corporate honchos and government officials were recently handed over to disciplinary or judicial authorities for their roles in misusing government funds to the tune of a staggering USD 34.4 billion (Over Rs 1.5 lakh crore in Indian currency). Many officers indulged in luxuries like buying fancy cars and other consumer durables at state expense in addition to getting involved in money laundering, insider trading and providing false receipts, according to Chinese official news agency Xinhua.
The audit, conducted by auditing agencies under National Audit Office (NAO) across the nation in the first 11 months of 2009, covered 99,000 companies and 20,000 government officials including provincial-level cadres and heads of large state-owned enterprises. Cases involving 67 senior officials and 164 others were handed over to judicial authorities.
Meanwhile, in a routine exercise in India, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) disposed of 416 cases during October 2009, according to the latest data available. Of these, 32 were from public sector banks, 27 from ministry of railways, 9 from MCD, 6 each from Central Coalfields Ltd. and Hindustan Copper Ltd., 5 from ministry of Information & Broadcasting, 4 each from Central Board of Excise and Customs and Damodar Valley Corporation and 3 each from NHAI and Delhi government. The remaining 14 cases pertained to different departments of the government of India and PSUs.
Action and Appointments
a)
Ms Bhupinder Prasad, a 1976 batch Uttarakhand cadre IAS, presently special secretary in the department of justice, has been appointed
as secretary, in the department of justice, ministry of law and justice.
b)
Ms Vijaya Latha Reddy, a 1975 batch IFS, has been appointed as
secretary at the headquarters of the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in place of N Ravi, a 1973 batch IFS, who retired on December 31, 2009.
c)
Uday Kumar Verma, a 1976 batch MP cadre IAS, presently special secretary in the ministry of information and broadcasting as
central provident fund commissioner, Employees Provident Fund Organisation under ministry of labour and employment in the rank and pay of secretary in the vacancy of K Chandramouli, a 1975 batch UP cadre IAS.
d)
Ram Phal Pawar, a 1988 batch West Bengal cadre IPS,
SK Pandey, 1988 batch MP cadre IPS and
SL Thaosen, a 1988 batch MP cadre IPS have been appointed as IGs in the SPG, as measure personal to the officers and the post will revert to the level of DIGs once they vacate the posts.
THE wait is finally over. Pradeep Kumar, a 1972 batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre and presently secretary, department of defence production under the ministry of defence will be India’s next defence secretary. He would take over from Vijay Singh, a 1970 batch MP cadre IAS who is due to superannuate on July 31, 2009. Mr Kumar will have a tenure of two years from the date of taking over the charge of the post.
babu blogger in a post dated June 20, 2009, said that Mr Kumar is “believed to be the front-runner for the post thanks to his experiences in defence department for sometime now.”
IN ORDER to monitor recruitment of women in government, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has directed all ministries and departments to submit a consolidated report including attached or subordinate offices on the total number of posts and employees group-wise and gender-wise as on March 31, 2009 latest by August 31, 2009. Indicating that it would be an annual process, the department has further said that the consolidated annual position as on March 31 of every year may also be furnished thereafter by May 30 of that year.
In fact, the government has initiated steps to ensure better representation of women members on various committees or boards concerned with the selection to posts in Central government and also to monitor the trend in recruitment of women. DoPT has further written to the secretaries of all ministries/departments of government of India to instruct all appointing authorities to scrupulously observe that selection committees should compulsorily have one woman member for making recruitment to 10 or more vacancies.
Even if vacancies against which selection is to be made is less than 10, efforts should be made in finding a woman officer for inclusion in such committees or Boards, the directive said. It further said that in the event of such an officer not being available in the ministry or department itself, there is no objection to nominating lady officer from any other office at the same station.
UNION minister of road transport and highways Kamal Nath’s appeal to his officials to change in attitude to have a sense of fulfilment and recognition is believed to be well in line with a few UPA ministers’ “make it or break it” policy to bring in changes in their ministries or departments.
Setting an ambitious target of building 20 km of highways per day, particularly in the backdrop of virtual roadblocks to progress of highway project during the last government, Mr Nath is aware that targets would be achievable only if officers put in their extra bit. As many as 38 public private partnership (PPP) projects bid out by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) before the last Lok Sabha polls received no bid at all, explaining the state of affairs of the road programme which was successfully rexecuted by the earlier regime of the BJP.
Mr Nath, who visited the NHAI office in Delhi’s Dwarka area a couple of days ago, stressed upon complete sense of urgency and asked the officials to bring the issues to his notice which require his intervention. He called upon every official to have one common objective and to play their role in keeping India on a growth trajectory by building good highways.
He urged NHAI officials for a change in the work culture to speed up the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP).