KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Nov 11: Over a dozen dynamic officers of the state government are poised to get promoted to the IAS cadres through a selection process of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), but the procedure is hanging fire due to dilly-dally way of bureaucratic functioning.
As a result of the inordinate delay, resentment has started brewing up among the aspiring IAS officers, causing anxiety in them.
As per the existing norms, 70 per cent of postings of IAS officers in any state are made by the UPSC, whereas the remaining 30 per cent of vacancies are filled up by the officers upgraded to the IAS cadres from various departments including civil administration, health and medical administration, energy and State tax.
85 per cent of the potential promoted IAS are selected from the state-level administrative cadres whereas the remaining 15 per cent are selected from the non-administrative cadres.
Promotion of the officers belonging to both administrative cadres as well as non-administrative cadres could not be done in the two consecutive years from 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.
The promotion process was resumed in 2022 and as many as 40 officers belonging to the administrative cadres were upgraded to the IAS rank through an interview in the UPSC in June.
But 18 non-administrative officers who have been nominated for promotion to the IAS rank are eagerly waiting for their chance of appearing in the UPSC interview.
Highly-placed government sources revealed that a high-level officers’ panel had scheduled a meeting in May to finalise the list of the officers to be interviewed by the UPSC, but the meeting was cancelled for some reason.
Another such meeting was fixed in September, but this meeting was postponed again. Yet another meeting was scheduled for November 7, but unfortunately, this meeting also could not be materialised, thus the prospect of the 18 nominees continued to be hung in the fire again.
Interestingly, initially, only 13 officers were nominated for the UPSC interview in May, but as a final meeting was cancelled the same month five more officers got lateral entry in the list of nominees, making the matter shrouded with mystery.
Moreover, the five officers whose names were added to the list for the UPSC interview are Anil Kumar (assistant engineer), Sweta Kumari (Sub Registrar), Sujeet Kumar (Sub Registrar), Amar Kant Thakur (deputy commissioner, State Tax) and Pradeep Xalxo (deputy commissioner, State Tax).
