TIOL's article on "Cadre Review Implementation in CBEC"

THE CBEC Chairperson Shanti Sundharam is happy to inform that the implementation of the cadre restructuring of the department has been approved by the FM. The cadre review had been approved by the cabinet long ago and it is not known as to what the FM again approved. 

Any way the Department is going to get more than 18,000 posts. It will be a miracle if the Department can really fill those 18000 vacancies by promotion, recruitment or whatever means. It takes them a couple of years to fill up a few hundreds vacancies. When will they fill up 18000?

Maybe they will start with making the top unbearably heavy. They are going to have 14 new Principal Chief Commissioners, 38 new Chief Commissioners and 53 new Principal Commissioners that is they have a vacancy for 105 posts of Principal Commissioners and above. All the present Chief Commissioners will immediately move to the top slots and about 100 Commissioners can move into their chairs and some of them can get a further promotion in a day or two - if they can clear Delhi's red tape.  

But the biggest challenge is to promote about 2200 Superintendents as Assistant Commissioners. As such nobody has a proper updated list of all these officers. Maybe for the next one or two years, the only activity in the Board and the field offices would be promotions, postings, transfers, infrastructure, reorganisation and utter confusion - not necessarily in that order. 

The only reason for the cadre restructuring seems to be to address the problem of stagnation due to lack of promotion especially among the junior staff. But this actually will not solve the problem as only the senior officers will get promotion and the rest have to live with stagnation.

The Chairperson says that it is in the interest of the department to have a committed and largely satisfied work force. Stagnation is one of the de-motivating factors in this regard. While CR resolves some of the issues leading to stagnation, it does not address some of the root causes of stagnation. 

If some of these posts could be diverted to the Tribunal, maybe we could have had more Benches, which could have reduced the mounting arrears of cases in the Tribunal. And all these new officers are sure to add work for the Tribunal.