In proposal to GPSC, Goa wants to relax service qualification for new SPs

PANAJI: With 70% of Goa police’s superintendent (SP) posts lying vacant, the state government has sent a proposal to the Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC) to grant relaxation in qualifying service to promote dySPs to fill the vacancies.
The state government has proposed to promote 11 dySPs. Currently, Goa has 13 sanctioned SP posts, of which nine are vacant. Only four SPs — Shekhar Prabhudesai, Sammy Tavares, Vishram Borkar and Bossuet Silva — are in service. Borkar is currently posted at Raj Bhavan.
In its proposal, the government has approved the relaxation in terms of rule 30 of the Goa Police Service Rules, 1997 (the requisite years of service in respect of the officers in order to consider them for promotion to the post of senior scale officer (SP)).
The proposal said that promotion of members of the service to the senior scale shall be made in consultation with the commission on the basis of merit with due regard to seniority.
“An officer with a minimum six years of regular service in the junior scale shall be eligible for being considered for appointment to the senior scale, provided that where a person is considered for such appointment, all persons senior to him in the junior scale shall be considered irrespective of whether or not they fulfil the requirements as to the minimum of six years of regular service in the junior scale,” the proposal said.
Recently, the GPSC had lifted the probation of 14 dySPs after they successfully completed the 45-day training programme at the Goa institute of public administration and rural development (GIPARD).
With this, the dySPs cleared the first step to become SPs, a senior officer said. At present, the 14 dySPs have completed over 4.5 years. Last year, the GPSC rejected the state government’s proposal seeking exemption of certain requirements for promotion from dySP to SP. The government had sought exemption from the departmental exams, preparation of syllabus, and requisite number of years of service needed for the promotion.
The exemptions were sought as various posts of SPs are lying vacant. The government had said that this shortage was affecting the functioning of the department.