Army makes important changes in CR forms, grading not to be shown to officers

It was in early 1990s that the grading given to an officer in his CR was made available to him to see before he signed his CR form. (Representational)

In a major policy change pertaining to the Confidential Reports (CRs) of Army officers, the Military Secretary’s (MS) branch has announced that the box grading received by an officer from his immediate appraiser will not be shown to him/her henceforth. The MS Branch of the Army Headquarters has notified these changes in a policy letter issued on February 20, 2018 and addressed to all Commands of the Army. The letter, accessed by The Indian Express, states that the several changes in the CR form will come into effect from June 1, 2018.

As per the new policy the grading given to an appraisee by his appraiser, known as the Initiating officer (IO) in Army parlance, will now not be shown to him. ‘The IO/FTO (First Technical Officer) box have been shifted from the ‘open portion’ to the ‘closed portion’, the letter states. It was in early 1990s that a policy change took place and the grading given to an officer in his CR was made available to him to see before he signed his CR form. The Army HQs has justified the change made in the CR form now by saying that there has been a trend of ‘inflationary’ reporting in the CRs. This means that officers were being given higher grades which appeared unrealistic.

The letter states,” Aspects of inflationary trend in CRs and onerous responsibilities of reporting officers in ensuring objective assessment have been reiterated from time to time. However, it has been observed that inflationary trend in CRs continues to exhibit a steady rise,”. The policy letter adds that the issue came up for discussion in the Army Commander’s Conference held last year and thus the changes in the CR forms were being incorporated.

Lt Gen HS Panag (retd), former Northern and Central Army Commander said that there has been experimentation with the ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ system in the past too but there has not been an optimum result. “We have not been able to bring down inflationary reporting with the open system because of a lack of moral courage to tell the appraisee the truth regarding his performance. However, I doubt that a partially closed system, as it seems to have been recommended now, will also work,” he said.

Another important change which has been made in the CR form is in grading of certain personal qualities of the officers. These were known as ‘Star Qualities’ due to an Asterisk mark on them, signifying their importance. The special mark emphasising their importance has now been removed. This change will only be for officers above six years of service to the rank of Colonel.

Amendments have also been made in the chain of reporting for officers (Major to Colonel) of technical arms and services. Henceforth, if the IO /FTO and the Reviewing Officer or Higher Technical Officer (HTO) are the same then no figurative assessment will be made and only a pen picture of the asessee will be given. For officers of the rank of Brigadier and above, the box grading has been removed from the technical report in the CR forms.

In another important move amendments have been made in nthe form to achieve uniformity in recommendations for important career courses like Higher Command (HC), Higher defence Management Course (HDMC) and National Defence College (NDC). This has bene done because in internal assessements of the CRs it has been observed that a number of the reports were kept under observation due to incomplete or incorrect endorsement. Thie changes have also been made for the Command and Staff stream endorsement.

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