Will government widen pool of assignments for senior IB officials?

New Delhi: As the government looks for suitable assignments to shift out all senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers who were superseded in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) when Tapan Kumar Deka was made the Director of the domestic intelligence agency, officials say the problem can be solved by widening the pool of the vacancies for senior IB officials.

“As of now, senior IB officials are hardly empanelled as additional secretary or special secretary as they lack requisite tenure under the Central Staffing Scheme (CSS), through which officials are provided to fill posts from the rank of deputy secretary/director and above in the central ministries. A minimum tenure of three years in CSS as deputy secretary/director or in a post ranked above them, is required for officials to be considered for empanelment to hold the post of additional secretary or special secretary. But the tenure served in the IB is not counted as a CSS tenure. Therefore, barring few IB officials, who have earlier served in the ministries on a CSS post, most of them are not empanelled as additional secretary or special secretary. There has been a preliminary discussion on including the IB tenure under the CSS and hence enabling the IB officials to hold post of additional secretary or special secretary in various ministries of the government. But it hasn’t gone any further than that,” said a government source.

The sources added that Intelligence Bureau is one of the organisations “in the ministry of home affairs” unlike other central police organisations which are subordinate offices of the ministry. The IB officials can therefore be considered as working in the ministry, under the central staffing scheme, while serving in the bureau. It would make IB officials eligible to hold posts of additional secretary or special secretary in other ministries too, widening the pool of vacancies for them.

Four senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers - Manoj Yadava, Manoj Kumar Lal, Amitabh Ranjan and Anish Dayal Singh were superseded when the government appointed their batchmate (from 1988 batch) Tapan Kumar Deka as the next DIB.

As of now the government has very few vacancies at the centre to accommodate all four superseded officials.

Therefore, one of the superseded officials, Manoj Kumar Lal has been sent back to his parent cadre of Union Territories as there is no vacancy at the centre at the moment. Another IB official, Manoj Yadava, could be accommodated in the National Human Rights Commission as Director General of Investigation as the incumbent, Santosh Mehra, a 1987 batch IPS officer of Andhra cadre was prematurely sent back to his parent cadre.

NewsDrum on July 7 had reported about these changes in the offing.

But Anish Dayal Singh and Amitabh Ranjan are yet to be moved out of the IB as there are no suitable assignments available for them at the centre at the moment.

“If the tenure of IB officials had been under the CSS, then the situation could have been better as there would have been more vacancies available for them,” further added the source.