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| Adhocism in State administration mars Governance | | | Bashir Assad
Jammu, Dec 31: Governance in Jammu and Kashmir continues to be affected by the administrative adhocism and hundreds of gazetted officers, including Heads of Departments (HoDs) and Secretaries to the Government, are either holding additional charge of other substantive posts or officiating on substantive positions without the Government's confirmation and the list of top-level bureaucrats and officers managing more than one post is piling up with each passing day.
Even a cursory look at the hierarchy of the State's bureaucracy brings to fore that many top bureaucrats of the level of Commissioner Secretaries and Secretaries to the Government are holding additional charges of different departments and statutory bodies. And interestingly the list of such officers is pilling up despite the repeated assurances by the Government to do away with such practices.
It has been a routine practice that whenever the transfers and postings of top bureaucrats are affected by the State Cabinet one officer is relieved from the additional charge and other is given the additional charge and this has been a common practice by all the regimes since 1996.
Many top bureaucrats including BB Vyas, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Hirdesh Kumar Singh, Secretary School Education Department, Soujanya Kumar Sharma, Director Tourism Jammu and many others are holding charge of more than one departments.
A senior bureaucrat told Early Times that the adhocism is eating into the vitals of governance as officials can't do justice with two assignments simultaneously. "We can attribute adhocism in bureaucracy to coalition compulsions, but at the lower level Ministers assign several charges to their blue-eyed officials for their interests," he said, adding the practice is bringing disrepute to the State administration. He said that the practice continues despite clear-cut instructions from Supreme Court of India to discourage adhocism.
A number of officers of the rank of Heads of Department are also holding "temporary charge" of key positions in civil administration. In addition to this, a number of retired bureaucrats and senior officers have been re-employed and they have been holding key positions in different departments and corporations. Some of them have been designated as MDs, Consultants, Advisors and Officers on Special Duty (OSDs).
As regards the key technical departments like Forest, Power Development, Health and other works related departments, more than 70% of the officers are holding second or third higher position in the hierarchy as "stop gap arrangement" for years. |
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