Government cracks whip after PM Narendra Modi-led ACC is snubbed

NEW DELHI: All ministries and departments have been hauled up by the Narendra Modi-led Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) for ignoring DoPT’s eight-month old order to update online senior-level government vacancies for consideration of the apex Prime Minister-led Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC).

DoPT’s Establishment Officer Rajiv Kumar has written a strong letter to the Secretaries of all ministries on Wednesday specifying now 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 ACC Vacancy Monitoring System (AVMS), the Secretary of the respective Ministry will have to explain reasons by the way of a “Delay statement”. The DoPT letter shows Ministries have snubbed an earlier August 8, 2014 order which aimed at ensuring timely appointments by ACC. Delayed submission of proposals “continues to be a norm rather than an exception”, the current letter says, pointing out that a recent review “has revealed that status of vacancies and posts are still not being updated on regular basis”.

Cracking the whip, DoPT in its April 22 letter has now specified a new process to ensure regular updation of AVMS and timely submission of ACC proposals. “Each nodal officer will submit a monthly certificate within the 7th of every month certifying that the position of posts pertaining to his Ministry has been fully updated in all respects as on the last day of the previous month,” the letter says. It further specifies that each proposal requiring approval of ACC needs to be accompanied by four documents or any such proposal submitted after May 1, 2015 without the accompanying documents will “not be entertained” and returned to the Ministry.

Three of the documents are -- “an updated AVMS statement pertaining to the post in question, a printout of the last monthly certificate and a certificate from the concerned Joint Secretary signing the proposal that the status of all posts have been dealt by him and has been updated in the AVMS.” The letter has specified that if a proposal is not submitted two months in advance of the date of vacancy or the additional charge arrangement coming in place, a “Delay statement” signed by the nodal officer with the approval of the “concerned Secretary” needs to be enclosed with the proposal “clearly bringing out the reasons for the delay, the chronology of dates involved in processing the proposal at various stages, and the action being taken to ensure that such delays do not recur in future.”

The DoPT earlier wrote to all Secretaries on August 8 last year saying the AVMS is designed to facilitate monitoring of all appointments in CPSEs, Autonomous Organisations, and Statutory and Regulatory bodies as well as to the posts in the Ministries. “If used to its potential, the AVMS can provide complete detail of all posts in a Ministry which require ACC's approval for appointment,” the August 8 letter said. That letter had added that non-timely update of vacancies in AVMS “makes it impossible for the system to provide any meaningful output which could be used for monitoring purposes.” The DoPT last August had also asked for a compliance report within 15 days on uploading of the requisite data in the AVMS. “Clearly, the same has not happened,” a senior DoPT official conceded to ET.