Finance department delays OSFS promotion

BHUBANESWAR: In what could be termed as a mockery of the State Government’s promotion adalats and 5T initiative, the Finance department seems to have resorted to delaying tactics to bend rules favouring scheduled category employees in the matter of promotion.

A Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) meeting was held on January 24 to select 230 candidates from Odisha Sub-ordinate Finance Service (OSFS) cadre for promotion to Odisha Taxation and Accounts Service (OT&AS) cadre.

Even after one and a half months of the DPC meeting, the department is yet to publish the promotion list of the candidates.

“While several candidates retired in February, a few more will be superannuated this month. Their promotional benefits have grossly been compromised owing to delay in publication of DPC proceedings,” said one of the candidates awaiting promotion.

There is speculation about possible changes in the rules to accommodate more candidates belonging to SC and ST in the list flouting the norms set by the Supreme Court in the matter of promotion, sources said.

Such speculation is  not without basis. A couple of months ago, the Home department had made similar mistake in the matter of promotion of Assistant Section Officers to the post of Desk Officers.

After this paper exposed the fallacies of the DPC interpreting the rules in a wrong way, the department issued promotion order on the basis of the apex court judgment and followed the post-based roster allowing specific slots to SC/ST as well as general category candidates as per their entitlement within the overall limit for promotion.

The Supreme Court has clearly given its views in the matter of RK Shabharwal and others xs State of Punjab that there should be post-based promotion, which clearly means that no un-reserved post can be given to reserved category candidates in promotion.