The promotion of IAS officers from 1984 batch was lingering on since last two years. Rajasthan and Maharashtra were the only states where administrative officers worked as principal secretaries in various state departments. Due to this setback, the promotion of junior officers was in the state of jeopardy. For that reason, Rajasthan government was under intense pressure to promote the senior-level officers to the higher cadre.
After much delay, the government finally announced the appraisal of four IAS officers, who were now promoted to the rank of additional chief secretary. The newly-promoted IAS officers Rajeev Swarup, Sudarsan Sethi and J C Mohanty were offered an apex grade scale of Rs 80,000. Moreover, IAS officer Kehmraj Chaudhary from the same batch has been offered the same pay grade for his current rank. Chaudhary currently holds the position of Rajasthan Tax Board chairman.
While this was a happy news for the four batch mates, two other officers of the same group, unfortunately, couldn’t make it to the list. The said officers Giri Raj Singh and Ravi Shankar Srivastava may have to wait sometime longer for the promotion.
Though a little late, but the officers welcomed Rajasthan government’s move. Had this decision been implemented earlier, they could’ve earned an additional Rs 2.5 lakh per year. In any case, their new designation and pay scale will come into effect from January 1, 2017. This means the officers will start getting new salaries from this month itself.
Now the government has major challenges ahead. They need to do something regarding the plea of junior officers that haven’t been promoted yet. At the beginning of the year, Rajasthan government had promoted two IPS officers of 1992 batch to the rank of IG (Inspector General) whereas the remaining six officers of the same year were kept from appraisals. This has created disparities among the batch mates who’ve had the same joining date.
The newly promoted officers are senior to their batch mates, considering their new ranks. Therefore, the remaining officers have sought government intervention to balance out the unfairness of this situation. As expected, the government is in a state of dilemma, but they’ve appointed the personnel responsible for this job to come up with a concrete solution to this issue.
The officers are hopeful that the government will promote the deserving officers, as per their capabilities.
