TMC slams Centre over making CVC nod a must to employ ex-bureaucrats

KOLKATA: The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal on Friday slammed the Centre’s order making vigilance clearance mandatory for offering post-retirement jobs to bureaucrats, calling it an attempt to impose more control on state government organisations and officials.

The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), in an order on Thursday, said all government organisations have to seek clearance before offering post-retirement jobs to bureaucrats. Signed by officer on special duty Rajiv Verma, the three-page document was sent to all central ministries, public sector units, banks and autonomous bodies.

“The Centre came up with such an order because it has failed on all fronts. This is an attempt to impose more control on government organisations and bureaucrats,” said TMC Rajya Sabha member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy.

BJP state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said, “This is a process to ensure that bureaucrats, who take the oath to protect the interests of the nation and follow the code of official secrecy in regard to state and national security, follow rules”.

The order, which HT has seen, was issued two days after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee employed the state’s former chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay as her special adviser on May 31, the day he retired, amid a tussle with Centre. Bandopadhyay, who was given a three-month extension following an appeal by the state, but was asked to report for duty at the North Block office of the department of training and personnel on his last working day.

Banerjee refused to release the bureaucrat and the Centre sent him a show cause letter, accusing him of violating Section 51 (b) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, by not attending the meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Kalaikunda on May 28 to review damages done by Cyclone Yaas. Banerjee, accompanied by the bureaucrat, met Modi during the meeting, but left in a few minutes. Bandopadhyay joined duty on June 1 on a three-year contract and replied to the show cause letter on Thursday.

The CVC, India’s apex anticorruption body for government officials and which was formed in the mid-1960s, has said that accepting a job offer without completion of a mandatory cooling-off period will amount to “serious misconduct.”

“It has been observed that sometimes government organisations... use the expertise of retired government officials by hiring them on contractual basis, in the capacity of advisor/consultant etc. There is no defined procedure for seeking vigilance inputs before engaging the retired officials…,” said the order, adding this may lead to situations where people with tainted past are engaged by a government organisation.

THE TMC SAID THE ORDER WAS AN ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE MORE CONTROL ON STATE