Civil Services Board yet to start their effective functioning in the states

On October 31, 2013, the Supreme Court in the case of ‘T S R Subramanian and others v. Union of India,’ had directed all states to set up civil services board (CSB) in their respective states.  The formation of the CSB was with the intent of making the civil servants free from political pressures and its mandate included to advice on all service matters, especially about transfers, postings and disciplinary action in case of the civil servants. While discussing fixed tenure for transfer and postings of civil servants, the Apex Court had observed that:

·         Frequent transfer and postings of civil servants is not in public interest and is deleterious to good governance

·         Transfers and postings of civil servants are being made at the whims and fancies of the executive head for political and other considerations

·         Having a fixed minimum tenure for civil servants would help the civil servants to function as effective instruments of public policy and would ensure increased efficiency.

·         A fixed tenure would enable the civil servants to achieve their professional targets and to prioritize various social and economic measures intended to be implemented for the poor and marginalized sections of the society.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel, Public grievances and Pensions had issued a notification in January, 2014 for fixing the minimum tenure of two years for all IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service officers. It has been seen that many states are yet to implement the Supreme Court directions to form the civil services board (CSB) and in some states where it has been formed, the functioning of the same remains only on paper.

As per information obtained by advocate H C Arora through an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Punjab government is yet to set up CSB. The reply shows that at least 40 officers have been transferred more than twice between from April 1, 2013 to December 31, 2014.

In this duration of less than two years, Punjab has witnessed the transfer of IAS officers Ashwani Kumar, Vipul Ujwal and Vineet Kumar four times while Dharamvir, Karan Avtar Singh, Seema Jain and Rahul Tiwari were transferred thrice. In this period of 21 months, the officers who were transferred twice include Anurag Aggarwal, Amar Partap Singh Virk, Sumer Singh Gurjar, Dharamvir, Vajralingam, Gopal Krishan Singh, Harjeet Singh, A Venu Prasad, Bhupinder Singh, Kamaldeep Singh Sangha, B. Srinivasan, Suresh Kumar, Sanyam Aggarwal, Neelima, Sameer Kumar, Mandeep Singh Sandhu, Shruti, Vikas Partap, Manjit Singh Narang, Anurag Verma, Gurdev Singh Ghuman, Arun Sekhri, Pardeep Kumar Aggarwal, Amit Dhaka, Ravinder Singh, Manpreet Singh, Anindita Mitra, Parveen Kumar, Viswajeet Khanna, Anirudh Tewari, Rahul Tewari, Ajoy Sharma and Jagpal Singh.