Cabinet Secretary pulls up all Secretaries for delayed appointment proposals to ACC

NEW DELHI: In a strong letter to the Secretaries of all Ministries, Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha has expressed the government's unhappiness over proposals for senior-level appointments and additional charge arrangements being submitted to the Prime Minister-led Appointments Committee of Cabinet ( ACC) at the eleventh hour by the ministries.

"It is a matter of concern that despite existing guidelines, proposals for appointment or additional charge arrangements continue to be submitted for consideration of ACC at the eleventh hour, leaving the ACC with little time to adequately scrutinize the proposals which many a time, become a fait-accompli," Sinha has written in a letter to all Secretaries on December 10. "Also, despite reminders, the position with respect to CPSEs/Autonomous Organizations/Statutory Bodies/Tribunals, etc. is not being regularly updated on the ACC Vacancy Monitoring System ( AVMS) with the result that monitoring of vacancies and advance planning to fill them up becomes difficult," the Cabinet Secretary has written.

It has now been specified that proposals not submitted to the Establishment Officer's office at least two months in advance of the date of vacancy/ending of the additional charge arrangement, as the case may be, would have to be accompanied by a "Delay Statement" duly signed by the Secretary of the Ministry or Department indicating the time taken at various stages of processing the proposal, the reasons for delay and the action taken to avoid such situations in future. "The position on AVMS should be updated within a period of seven days and a certificate to the effect that the position with respect to all posts pertaining to your Ministry or Department has been updated till last date of the previous month must henceforth be attached with all ACC proposals," the Cabinet Secretary has told Secretaries in his letter, specifying these instructions must be strictly complied with.

The Cabinet Secretary's missive comes after the government's Establishment Officer (EO) Rajiv Kumar had also written a strong letter to the Secretaries of all ministries in April saying delayed submission of proposals to the ACC “continues to be a norm rather than an exception” and a review had revealed that status of vacancies and posts were not being updated on regular basis on AVMS. The EO too had said in his April letter that if a proposal for filling up a senior-level vacancy is not submitted at least 2 months in advance of the date of the impending vacancy and updated on the AVMS, the Secretary of the respective Ministry will have to explain the reasons for the same by the way of a “Delay statement”.