Babus want appraisals done before 11 Dec

They are afraid of a change in government when results are in.

The IAS and IPS officers, who are posted in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, have requested their respective Chief Ministers to write their “annual confidential reports” (ACRs) before 11 December, when the results of the Assembly elections in the two states will be announced.

As per rules, Chief Ministers personally review the ACRs of Under-Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, Joint Secretaries and Additional Secretaries who are attached to the Chief Secretary, apart from the ACRs of Additional Chief Secretaries, Commissioners, Secretaries and other high ranking officers holding independent charge of administrative departments. The ACRs of Deputy Commissioners, which is written by the Commissioner, is also reviewed by CMs.

The Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC), in which the promotion of IAS and IPS officers is deliberated upon, in both the states has to take place before 31 December and hence the officers in both Bhopal and Raipur are pushing for the completion of their ACRs as soon as possible.

In both these states, the BJP has been in power since 2003 and these bureaucrats, who have loyally served the incumbent for 15 long years, feel that if there is a change in government on 11 December, their fate will be left in the hands of Congress leaders who may or may not be charitable towards them. Officers from 1991, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2015 batches are awaiting the DPC recommendation.

In Raipur, Chief Minister Raman Singh, who is very popular among the bureaucrats for his nature of taking everyone along, has himself asked the IAS officers to make sure that their ACRs are completed before 11 December.

“We have been in power for the last 15 years and it is natural that some of the bureaucrats have become close to the Chief Minister. It is a natural thing and it happened during the Congress rule too. These IAS and IPS officers feel that the Congress, if it comes to power, will not be fair towards their ACRs, and hence they are showing this urgency,” a Bhopal-based BJP leader said. However, according to the bureaucrats, the urgency for the ACRs was not related to the possibility that the Congress might come to power. “In any case, the ACR has to be written by the year-end. The only thing that is worrying us is that if there is a change of power, than the new leadership will require time to get acclimatised and this may result in unnecessary delay in reviewing the ACRs. Hence, the officers are trying that the process is completed as soon as possible,” an IAS officer, who is posted in Chhattisgarh, said. Former Union ministers who are still in influential positions, and top bureaucrats and individuals who have occupied gubernatorial positions in the past are going to come under CBI investigation in the Rs 3,600-crore VVIP helicopter scam which has hogged the limelight afresh after the extradition of British national Christian Michel to India from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

CBI officials, who had dealt with the case when it was first given to the agency in February 2013, said that it could not go deep into the role played by certain individuals at the time since they were occupying positions of influence and it was virtually impossible to investigate them. However, with Michel in their custody now and a change in the political dispensation, they believe that they will be able to summon those individuals who had escaped a detailed questioning earlier.

Agency sources said that the bureaucrats who were in