Thiruvananthapuram:
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan termed the move by the
Centre to appoint
experts from the
private sector as joint secretaries in the government ‘a ploy to induct RSS supporters in key administrative locations’.
In his Facebook post, the chief minister said that no one will believe the Centre’s justification that this would help induct more experts and professionals in the policy-making level. He said that the post of joint secretary is a crucial one with regards to policy making and implementation of government programmes. The appointments to the post are made only from IAS or other central services. With the new decision, the all India services will become weak and irrelevant.
It is a move to hand over responsibilities to those who are politically submissive by jeopardising the notion that the
bureaucracy should be independent and permanent, the chief minister said.
Though at present the appointments are being made only to key ministries like revenue, finance, trade, civil aviation, agriculture, cooperation, transport and shipping and environment, this is only a beginning. Later, this will be extended to all the ministries, he said. The CM added that it should also be taken into consideration what would happen if the contract employees go back to the private sector after their service.
The Centre had thrown open the post of joint secretaries of 10 ministries to private sector, PSU and central government employees, who have subject expertise and are above 40 years of age. The employees from private sector will be appointed on a three-year contract while those from government and
PSUs will be on
deputation basis. The post of joint secretaries have traditionally been the post of IAS officers who are normally in the rank of secretaries and principal secretaries in the state, but of late, the present government at the Centre has been appointing officers from other all-India services also to the post.