In another significant blow to bureaucratic corruption, the Centre has asked all its departments to review the record of employees who have completed 30 years in service and show the doors to the corrupt and inefficient by retiring them prematurely.
The order issued by the Ministry of Personnel and Public Grievances and Pensions stated “The employees’ performance review is conducted under the Fundamental Rule (FR) 56 (J) and 56 (I), and also under Rule 48 (1) (b) of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972, that gives “absolute right” to the appropriate authority to retire a government servant, “if it is necessary to do so in public interest”.
It means that the government may at any time after a government servant has attained the age of 50/55 years or completed 30 years of service, as the case may be, retire the person prematurely in public interest. The government has the right to compulsorily retire those who have completed a service period of 30 years by giving a notice period of not less than 3 months in writing or 3 months’ pay and allowances.
The FR 56 (J) states that service record of a group A and B category officer can be reviewed if he/she has attained the age of 50 years (in case of joining service before 35 years of age) or after attaining 55 years (in case of joining service after 35 years of age).
The Ministry has asked the departments to maintain a register for conducting the review. Composition of a review committee and the broad criteria for conducting the assessment of employees’ performance has also been notified.
Government servants who are found to be inefficient, corrupt and whose integrity is doubtful will be made to retire compulsorily. The criteria states that ordinarily, no government servant should be retired on ground of ineffectiveness if in any event, he would be retiring on superannuation within a period of one year from the date of consideration of his case. However, it added that if there is a sudden and steep fall in the competence, efficiency or effectiveness of a government servant, it would be open to review.
After coming back to power in 2019, the Modi government has undertaken the exercise of weeding out of corrupt and inefficient officers 5 times. The first wave of compulsory retirements was done on June 10, 2019, when 12 top government officials mainly belonging to the income tax department were shown the doors. In August 2019, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs made 22 officers to retire compulsorily on charges of corruption. In September, 15 tax officials were retired after PM Modi mentioned that there existed blacksheeps in the tax administration who have misused their powers and harassed tax payers. 21 tax officers were made to compulsorily retire in November 2019 for various charges taking the total number of tax officers compulsorily retired in 2019 to 85.