Cab Secy turns down Alagiri request for TN cadre officer

Less than a week after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told bureaucrats that he favoured merit over age,Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar has written to a Cabinet Minister that seniority would be the sole criteria in filling top positions.

Less than a week after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told bureaucrats that he favoured merit over age,Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar has written to a Cabinet Minister that seniority would be the sole criteria in filling top positions.

On April 27,Chandrasekhar informed Fertilisers and Chemicals Minister M K Alagiri that the rank of a civil servant as decided at the time of inducting him in the services would be considered in filling the post of secretaries as and when they fall vacant.

While responding to Alagiri’s request to appoint Dr Mrutyunjay Sarangi as Petrochemicals Secretary,Chandrasekhar wrote that Sarangi’s “turn has not yet come as there are several officers senior to him in the list of empanelled officers awaiting appointment as secretaries”.

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“The ACC (Appointments Committee of the Cabinet) policy is to give postings to officers lower in the batch only after seniors are considered,” the Cabinet Secretary added.

Officers have been in the past given departments as per their experience rather than await their turn as per the pecking order.

Alagiri had asked for Sarangi as the latter is from the Tamil Nadu cadre and speaks Tamil,the language the minister is comfortable in,fluently.

Interestingly,while spelling out the ACC’s seniority policy,Chandrasekhar has listed eight candidates for Alagiri to choose from,an indication that the rank order may not be as strict a condition as he has made it out to be.

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