DoPT approves mass promotion of nearly 1,600 ASOs to Section Officers

Posted On: 27 JUN 2023 5:43PM by PIB Delhi

Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel has approved the mass promotion of 1,592 officials working in the capacity of Assistant Section Officers (ASOs) to the post of Section Officers on adhoc basis with immediate effect.

Announcing this here today, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that the Promotion orders will be issued soon by the respective Cadre Controlling authorities.

The Promotions had been expedited at the directions of the Minister Incharge DoPT, Dr Jitendra Singh who personally reviewed the entire process.

“Government has been granting mass promotions to employees in order to motivate them and overcome the problem of long stagnation. Another 2,000 promotions in ASO and other Grades are in process and hopefully they will get promoted by this year end,” the Minister said.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that in the last nine years, under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Government has periodically reviewed the longstanding stagnation issues in the various Central Ministries that are a legacy of the past due to pending court cases, lack of vacancies in higher grades and other personnel issues.

The Minister said, last year also about 9,000 mass promotions were made and prior to that the DoPT granted 4,000 promotions in the preceding three years.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, he himself personally feels disturbed to come across cases where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without securing a single promotion. He said, he has discussed the issue with all the senior officers in the Ministry and several innovative means have been evolved to avoid stagnation at middle and lower rungs of the administration.

Dr Jitendra Singh also regretted that in a large number of cases, stagnation in promotions was the result of litigation amongst the employees themselves and even though the DoPT tries its best to put forward its view in the court of law, the delay becomes inevitable.

“PM Modi has made efforts to ensure that government jobs are available to the maximum extent possible. It is extremely painful and disheartening to see employees sometimes superannuating in the same grade as promotions remained stuck,” said the Minister.

The orders for mass promotion of these employees belonging to the Central Secretariat Service (CSS) have been issued after several rounds of high-level meetings in DoPT chaired by Dr Jitendra Singh in the last few months. The Minister said, even legal experts were consulted as some of the orders are subject to the outcome of pending writ petitions.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, in order to bring in the ease of governance as well as objectivity in empanelment, the government has, in the last nine years, improvised upon the procedures so as to ensure that there are no subjective preferences involved in carrying out the promotions.

“Procedures have been made more hi-tech using sophisticated technology tools to minimize the human interface,” he added.

The DoPT Minister said that the government has done away with over 1,600 rules which were either obsolete or had become irrelevant with the passage of time.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, “All this is meant not only to ensure effective and timely delivery of outcomes for the public, but also to enable the employees to perform to the best of their ability”.

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