Another 2,000 promotions for govt employees by year end: Jitendra Singh

Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said that almost 2,000 promotions in Assistant Section Officer (ASO) and other grades are in process and are likely to be completed by this year-end.

He stated this while meeting a delegation of central secretariat employees, including representatives of the Central Secretariat Service (CSS) forum and direct recruits of limited departmental competitive examination (LDCE), who had jointly called on the minister.

Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said that last year alone about 9,000 mass promotions were made and, prior to that, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) granted 4,000 promotions in three years.

The minister said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very keen that hardworking and performing officials should be provided with a work-friendly environment as well as timely service benefits so that they remain motivated to give in their best for nation-building.

The government led by Prime Minister Modi has been granting mass promotions to employees in order to motivate them and overcome the problem of long stagnation. Another 2,000 promotions in ASO and other grades are in process and hopefully, they will get promoted by this year-end," Singh was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry.

The DoPT had last month approved the mass promotion of 1,592 officials working in the capacity of ASOs to the post of Section Officers (SOs) on an adhoc basis with immediate effect.

The minister said that in the last nine years, under the guidance of Prime Minister Modi, the government has periodically reviewed the longstanding stagnation issues in the various central ministries that are a legacy of the past due to pending court cases, lack of vacancies in higher grades and other personnel issues.

Singh said the government is concerned about long stagnation in certain cadres and at certain levels where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of the administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without getting a single promotion.

Singh regretted that in a large number of cases, stagnation in promotions was the result of litigations prompted by inappropriate decisions or twisting of rules to give out-of-turn promotions during the previous governments, the statement said.

In few of the 4,000 promotions cleared in recent years, the government granted promotions despite the cases being sub-judice, after consulting legal experts and making valid provisions for judicial scrutiny, he said.