How Orissa budgets for 8216;duty-less8217; officers

Orissa even has budgetary provisions for such officers,it now transpires.

For seven years,a dozen IPS,IPS and IFS officers in Orissa have been bracketed in a group unique to the state. Called officers without duty by the Naveen Patnaik government,they have enjoyed all the perks and perquisites of all-India service officers but not been not assigned any work.

Orissa even has budgetary provisions for such officers,it now transpires. In a reply to an RTI application,filed by B Mohanty of Cuttack,the states general administration department has said such officers would be in the rank of commissioner-cum secretary and draw a salary in the scale of Rs 18400-500-22400. The system has been in practice since May 20,2006.

The state government had introduced the first such bracket anywhere in India. Since then,Naveen has been designating officers as without duty either on charges of corruption or if the officers are found difficult. The government has earlier admitted that there are no rules governing such officers.

Orissa currently has around a dozen officer without duties. Once someone is declared an OWD,he is supposed to report to the general administration department,the nodal department for all-India services and the Orissa Administrative Service,and stay till the end of office hours but without doing any work.

The post of Officer without Duty in GA department shall be manned by an officer of IAS who shall draw his grade pay along with dearness allowance as sanctioned by government from time to time under the AISDA Rules,1972. The post shall be within the existing cadre strength of the IAS cadre of the state, the GA department8217;s reply said.

The GA department said the budgetary expenditure for salary and perks of such officers is debitable to the budgetary estimates of the respective financial year. The finance department concurred with the practice in a letter dated September 6,2006.

In reply to another RTI application last year,the GA department had said there were no files,note sheets,rules or guidelines on who can be made an officer without duty. No such information is available, the department wrote. However,the state government is competent to place any public servant at any post under its control providing any nomenclature.

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Officers who have been made OWDs include Priyabrat Patnaik IAS,Santosh Kumar Mishra IAS,Ramesh Chandra Behera IAS,Hrusikesh Panda IAS,Arun Kumar Upadhyay IPS,Sisir Kumar Acharya IFS,Birendra Kumar Shukla IFS and Amarendra Jaiswal IFS.

The governments orders have not gone challenged either. In September 2007,the Central Administrative Tribunal had set aside the CMs orders notifying IAS officers Behera now retired and Mishra as officers without duty and directed the Orissa government to give the duo posts according to their seniority within 30 days time. They remain officers without duty. Behera,who belongs to the 1979 batch,and Mishra,of 1983,had been declared OWDs in May 2006 after their names had been linked to cases of alleged corruption..

Priyabrat Patnaik was made an officer without duty on May 1,2008,after his name came up in the murder case of judo coach Biranchi Das. Later,however,Patnaik was made secretary of the public grievances and pension administration.

Upadhyay is the lone IPS officer in the list. He had rubbed the government the wrong way with controversial remarks about the culpability of senior IPS officers in the 2008 Kandhamal riots.