99 top slots vacant in key ministries, NITI Aayog & EC

NEW DELHI: Key ministries like defence, home, finance, NITI Aayog and even the Election Commission are grappling with cutting-edge level shortage of Joint Secretaries and Directors with officers shirking from coming on deputation to Delhi in the new political dispensation.

Latest details available show there are as many as 99 vacancies of Director/Deputy Secretary level officers under the Central Staffing Scheme and 31 vacancies at Joint Secretary Level. Only 54 Director/Deputy Secretary level officers are on offer for central assignments.

While there are 40 officers available for joint secretary level assignments at the Centre, only five among them are IAS officers while four are from the IPS. No IAS officer is on the offer list for Director Posts while the only IPS officer available, Binita Thakur, who till this August was HRD Minister Smriti Irani’s private secretary, was on Friday appointed as Director in NATGRID.

What is alarming is that the highest numbers of vacancies are in sensitive and importan ministries, the NITI Aayog, UIDAI and EC. Two such posts are vacant in the UIDAI, as per latest details. On the Director level, the NITI Aayog and UIDAI are struggling with as many as seven vacancies together, the home ministry has eight vacancies while the four departments of the finance ministry have as many as 12 vacancies at this level.