Jammu, Jan 27: Bringing to the fore wide-spread disorder in the state’s administrative setup, a high level committee has pinpointed blatant violation of rules leading to complete mess in fixing seniority of the Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS) officers.
“The fundamental problem seems to be an ingrained lack of respect for the rules. The KAS Rules have not been seen as a mechanism for the orderly and systematic management of the KAS cadre, but as a means to create roadblocks for or to accelerate the professional advancement of individual officers”, a high level panel, headed by the then financial commissioner Samuel Verghese, has observed in its report submitted to the government. The recommendations were recently adopted by the government asking General Administration Department (GAD) to ensure induction, promotion of KAS officers strictly in accordance with the rules.
The Committee has observed that constant attempt to enable some persons to circumvent provisions in the KAS Rules “is responsible for the most of the mess in the KAS cadre at the movement”.
“Poor management of the system for inducting persons from the feeding cadres into the KAS has only aggravated the problem. The constant meddling with the rules relating to the number of persons to be inducted from each of the feeding cadres and the manner in which the selections are made appears to have been motivated by expediency and adhoc short-term objectives mostly related to furthering the interests of individual officers rather than from any desire to improve or fine-tune the system”, the report reads.
It points out that the rules were generally violated while raising, lowering and then muddling the eligibility criterion for induction of Direct Recruit Junior KAS officers into the KAS. It also raised objection over the way vacancy-based inductions were being made. “Adoption of replacement system for determining selection and induction into the KAS and non-adherence to the system for grading officers for the purpose of selection for induction into the KAS” were some of the issues considered to be done in violation of the rules.
“What is required is that KAS rules be formulated after careful consideration of all the relevant issues involved. The sole objective of the rules should be the orderly and systematic management of KAS cadre so as to maximize the utility of the members of the service for the purpose of providing efficient and effective governance in the state”, the committee observed. Given the obvious lack of capacity in GAD, it would be a good idea to consult widely before finalizing these rules”.
“As a matter of fact, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that GAD is a serial offender as it has not just misapplied the rules, but by indiscriminately amending KAS rules, GAD has in fact created most of the confusion in the cadre management,” the panel observed.
Asking the concerned departments to avoid adhoc amendment of the rules, the committee has further desired that the amendments to the rules should be made only after a periodical review, preferably conducted along with the cadre review and purely in the interests of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the KAS.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 IST