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| Daggers drawn in Forest deptt | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Oct 29: Even in the absence of a political government where favours in transfers and postings are rampant, battle lines are clearly drawn in the Forest department where the state officers have taken daggers out against the Indian Forest Services (IFS) officers.
Alleging preferential treatment to the IFS officers, the State Forest Officers Association has warned of a non-cooperation movement if their postings and promotions were not rationalized. They also accused the IFS officers of hatching and executing conspiracies against them.
However, the IFS officers have taken strong exceptions to the observations and utterances of the State Forest Officers and instead accused them of flouting all norms in the department.
After a meeting of the State Forest Officers Association, a handout issued by its publicity secretary Mufti Sajjad said “the members showed deep concern over the fact that the very existence of State Forest Officers is under threat due to the conspiracies hatched by some influential non-local officers under a well executed conspiracy by these officers”.
When contacted for comments, a senior non-local IFS officer said that the State Forest Officers have left very little scope and space for the IFS officers and still they are asking for more. Citing an example, the officer, who wished anonymity, told Early Times, “out of the 15 Forest Divisions in Jammu province, only three are manned by the IFS officers while on 12 Divisions there are either ACFs or Ranger Officers who have been given charge of Divisional Forest Officers”.
He added, the state governments from time to time have completely ignored and relegated to oblivion the IFS officers and all postings are skewed in favour of the State Forest Officers for their strong political connections. He also cited examples of at least four officers of the level of Conservators sitting idle without any posting.
The State Forest Officers said that no recruitment was carried out at the level of ACFs and ROs for the last more than twenty years, all the posts of Conservator and above were occupied by non local- officers and finally the posts of the DFOs are also being denied to the local officer in the name of cadrization of posts. New recruits of a certain service from outside the state without any knowledge of local forests as well as forest dweller, are posted at the prestigious posting while the same are denied to the local officers having '20-25 years of service in the name of cadrization of posts.
“Interestingly these non local officers are neither interested nor posted on such cadre posts in Kashmir valley but want to be posted in Jammu region only”, alleged the association. The members requested the government to immediately stop the exploitation of the State Forest Officers by these non local officers or otherwise a non cooperation movement will be launched against them and they alone will be responsible for the consequences. The members urged his excellency the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir to immediately intervene to address the 'genuine grievances of the State Forest Officers like regularization of Range Officers, ACFs, and DCFs, removal of pay anomalies, revision of outdated recruitment and promotion rules, and restructuring/re-organization of the cadre .on the pattern of KAS.
In the meeting, Gopal Sharma was elected as new president of the association replacing AK Magotra who is retiring tomorrow while Anwar Aftab Shah and Harminder Singh were elected Vice-Presidents, Varinder Magotra was elected General Secretary and Sajjad Mufti as Publicity Secretary, Rakesh Abrol as Organizing Secretary and Hitender Singh as Treasurer of the body. |
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