State to get 31 IAS, 3 IPS officers soon

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 20

Battling with shortage of IAS officers, the state is likely to get 31 officers soon, as the UPSC has fixed March 22 as date for the Department Promotion Committee (DPC) for elevation of HCS officers to the IAS cadre.

The state will also get three IPS officers, as the UPSC has also announced a selection committee’s meeting for promotion of HPS officers to the IPS cadre the same day.

Chief Secretary DS Dhesi said 32 HCS officers are to be promoted to IAS for vacancies for the years 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) SS Prasad said vacancies of the IPS for 2016 are to be filled through promotions from HCS officers.

The shortage of IAS officers in Haryana can be gauged from the fact that against the sanctioned strength of 212 IAS officers, the Chief Secretary’s website shows there are only 142 officers working at present. This year, three IAS officers will retire.

The situation has gone worse over the years due to delay in the promotion of HCS officers to IAS owing to litigations over the seniority list, as no one was promoted under this category. The last promotions were for the 2011 vacancy list as six officers were promoted in January last year.

On May 9 last year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had allowed the UPSC to go ahead with promotions, but not to make them public.

Subsequently, the matter reached the Supreme Court. On November 27 last year, the apex court had observed in its order, “The UPSC may proceed in accordance with law and the select list should be kept in a sealed cover.” However, the issue of holding a department promotion committee’s meeting kept hanging in balance since then.

Sources said the government had sent 42 names to be considered for 32 posts for the IAS cadre and nine names for three posts of the IPS cadre.

Sources said that among the 42 names of HCS officers sent by the government, two officers — SK Setia and Arvind Sharma — have since retired after completing the age of 58. Setia has already completed the age of 60 in January this year, while Sharma will be 60 in December. The retirement age of all-India service officers is 60 years.

“If the DPC clears their names, they will be promoted from the date when their promotion is due. But Setia will become an officer only on paper and Sharma can be recalled if the envelops of the outcome of DPC’s meeting are opened before December,” the sources added.

Meanwhile, the HCS officers who are affected by these promotions allege that the government was doing a futile exercise as the list anyway has to be kept under sealed cover as per the SC orders.