Govt depts again asked to implement Cabinet panel decisions within deadline

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba said the progress report should also be reported regularly on the eSamiksha portal of the government

For the second time in nearly a month, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba has asked secretaries of all ministries and departments to diligently implement the decisions of the Union Cabinet and Cabinet committees, adhere to deadlines.

In a letter to all secretaries on Monday, Gauba said it was “of utmost importance that follow up action on Cabinet/Cabinet committee decisions is monitored and pursued till all decision points are implemented”.

He said it was important that “timelines indicated in the “implementation schedule” and on the “statement on major milestones and corresponding target dates” appended to cabinet notes are “adhered to”.

This is the second such instruction Gauba has issued to secretaries of all departments and ministries. He sent a similar letter on October 9. That letter had asked secretaries to “conduct a review of all the unimplemented Cabinet committee decisions from May 2014” pertaining to their respective departments, implement them expeditiously and record the reasons for delay. The first Narendra Modi government took office on May 27, 2014, and the second on May 31 this year.

In his letter on Monday, Gauba said the status of Cabinet/Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) decisions for the period May 31 to October 31 was presented to the Cabinet and council of ministers recently. “It was decided to present the status of decisions before the council of ministers on a regular basis,” he said.

Gauba said the progress report should also be reported regularly on the eSamiksha portal of the government. The portal is a real time system for monitoring of follow-up action on the decisions taken during the presentations made by different ministries and departments to the prime minister. 

In his October 9 letter, Gauba had asked secretaries to “examine the reasons for slippages from adherence to approved time-lines”. “Concrete action plans may be prescribed with clearly identifiable time-lines and milestones for different activities to ensure effective implementation,” he had said.