Govt keen to ensure timely promotions of employees without slightest delay: Jitendra Singh

New Delhi: The central government is keen to ensure timely promotions of its employees without the slightest delay, Union Minister Jitendra Singh has said.

The minister made the assertion while speaking to a delegation of the Central Secretariat Rajbhasha Seva Sangathan which called on him Monday.

The members of the delegation thanked him for clearing the backlog of delayed promotion cases by ordering mass promotions and requested for similar disposal of remaining cases pertaining to Rajbhasha officials, a statement issued on Tuesday by the Personnel Ministry said.

Assuring that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is equally concerned about the timely promotions of government employees in various cadres, he said that in June this year, the DoPT had approved the mass promotion of 1,592 officials working in the capacity of Assistant Section Officers (ASOs) to the post of SOs on ad-hoc basis with immediate effect.

The minister said that last year alone about 9,000 mass promotions were made and the DoPT had granted 4,000 promotions in the preceding three years.

Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very keen that hardworking and performing officials should be provided with a work-friendly environment and timely service benefits so that they remain motivated to give in their best for nation-building.

The minister said that in the last over nine years, under the guidance of Prime Minister Modi, the government has periodically reviewed the longstanding stagnation issues in 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.

Singh said the government is concerned about long stagnation in certain cadres and at certain levels where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of the administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without getting a single promotion.

He said that in a large number of cases, stagnation in promotions was the result of litigations prompted by inappropriate decisions taken or rules twisted to give out-of-turn promotions by the previous governments.

In a few of the 4,000 promotions cleared in recent years, the government granted promotions despite the cases being sub-judice, by consulting legal experts and making valid provisions for judicial scrutiny, the minister said.