All government organisations should mandatorily seek vigilance clearance before offering post-retirement jobs to bureaucrats, Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) said in an order on June 3.
The order, issued to secretaries of all central government departments and chiefs of public sector banks, among others, said that the acceptance of such an employment offer without the completion of mandatory cooling-off period amounts to “serious misconduct".
"It has been observed that sometimes, government organisations, in order to meet their functional requirements, use the expertise of retired government officials by hiring them on contractual basis, in the capacity of advisor/consultant etc,” said the CVC order signed by Commission’s OSD, Rajiv Verma.
The order by CVC, India’s anti-corruption body, comes close on the heels of the Centre-State tussle over former West Bengal chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay.
A 1987-batch IAS officer, Bandopadhyay, who retired on May 31, has been served a notice by the Centre to reply within three days on why he should not be proceeded against under the provisions of the Disaster Management Act which come with a jail term of up to one year and a fine, if convicted.
Bandopadhyay was to report to Delhi at 10 am on May 31 but CM Mamata Banerjee said that he will stay and continue to manage her state's COVID-19 crisis and made him her advisor for a period of three years.
The June 3 order noted that the absence of a defined procedure for seeking vigilance inputs before engaging the retired officials sometimes leads to a situation where people with tainted past and cases pending against them are engaged by government organisations.
“In respect of retired officers belonging to All India Services, Group ‘A’, officers of central government, before offering employment to them, should necessarily obtain vigilance clearance from the employer organisation,” said the order by CVC- an apex Indian governmental body created in 1964 to address governmental corruption- in one of the many points referred to as the defined procedure to engage retired bureaucrats.
The order notes that quite often, cooling-off period, as prescribed under the rules of organisations concerned, is not observed before taking up such offers.
“Post retirement acceptance of offer by retired government officials without observing cooling off period constitutes a serious misconduct,” it said.
The order asks all government organisations to formulate appropriate rules and guidelines for their employees to ensure that post-retirement, the cooling-off period is mandatorily observed by them before accepting any offer from the private sector.