Govt trashes proposal to increase babus’ retirement age

A government committee has rejected a proposal to increase the retirement age of government servants from 60 to 62. The decision is likely to impact over one lakh central government employees and 50,000 defence personnel on the verge of retirement. The proposal — which could have meant saving Rs4,000 crore in this fiscal — was rejected as the government wants a younger bureaucracy.

The HRD ministry and sections of the academic community were temporarily preoccupied with a complaint the government received from a body claiming to represent SC/ST employees at the University Grants Commission (UGC) , alleging discrimination by Commission chairman Ved Prakash. But the complaint, it has now been discovered, was fake. The body that sent it doesn’t exist, the UGC’s SC/ST employees’ association has certified. The sender also refused to divulge his identity to the government. A case of attempted malice against the Chairman?

Politicians, it appears, aren’t alone in keeping their ambitions intact with age. IIT Directors, too, love second terms — even though some believe that a proper reading of the IIT Act — that governs the Institutes — does not allow repeats. After MS Ananth (second term at IIT Madras), Sanjay Dhande (second term at IIT Kanpur) and Gautam Barua (second term at IIT Guwahati), it is the turn of IIT Delhi Director Surendra Prasad to pitch for a second term. The qualification requirements for the post state that applicants should preferably be aged below 60. Prasad — caretaker director at present — is over 60. But that has not stopped him from applying for a second term.

After a file on the Cabinet decision of 1991 — regarding government accounts — went missing, neither the Cabinet Secretariat nor the Finance Ministry — which mooted the proposal — had any clue. Eventually, the Central Information Commission had to intervene and ask the government to locate the file and provide the requisite information to the RTI applicant.

Source: Hindustan Times