Only 2 weeks to confer on Cabinet issues

The Cabinet Secretariat has told secretaries in a written memo to follow the deadline for "expeditious decision-making"

The Narendra Modi government, in its latest direction to bureaucrats, has set a strict two-week time frame to wrap up inter-ministerial consultations, ahead of preparing and submitting notes for Cabinet meetings.

The Cabinet Secretariat has told secretaries, in a written memo on Friday, to follow the deadline for "expeditious decision making", it is learnt.

So far, a time frame was rarely set for inter-ministerial consultations, according to a bureaucrat. "And the process seldom took less than three months," he said. But there have been times when consultation was speeded up.

The latest memo also states that ministries that don't give their inputs within the time frame must be present at the Cabinet meeting to give their views. Indicating that this government is not going to take delay in decision making lightly, secretaries of those ministries not giving inputs in time must explain the reason for slipping deadlines.

While the time limit of two weeks is a positive move, it could be hard to achieve in practice, another official said. Apart from the competence level of bureaucrats, time taken in consultation also depends on the subject matter at hand. "Complex subjects need more time," he said.

Leaving nothing to chance, the government has asked secretaries to send the "requisite number" of copies of final Cabinet note to the Cabinet Secretary within three days, down from seven working days earlier, from the time the single copy of the final note is sent to the Prime Minister's Office.

Recently, groups of ministers and empowered groups of ministers were abolished by the government to fast-track decision making.