Data of panels fail to submit reports sought from GAD
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Sept 7: Government of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is planning to evolve a mechanism to monitor the functioning of inter-departmental committees and has sought data of such panels and pending reports thereof from the General Administration Department.
On the issues, which are required to be dealt with by different departments, the Government from time to time constituted inter-departmental committees for making recommendations and suggesting road-map in a time bound manner.
However, it has been noticed by the Government that most of such committees don’t meet the timelines fixed by the General Administration Department (GAD) as such objectives behind their constitution get defeated, official sources told EXCELSIOR.
This aspect came up for discussion in a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta recently and after detailed deliberations the need to evolve a mechanism to monitor the functioning of inter-departmental committees was felt, sources informed. Accordingly, General Administration Department was directed to prepare data with regard to the inter-departmental committees and reports pending thereof.
Disclosing that General Administration Department has already started a detailed exercise in this regard, sources said, “the mechanism is likely to be finalized in the shortest possible time as many issues which were assigned to the inter-departmental committees have remained undecided till date”, adding “the Government has even noticed that there are several such committees which have not started acting on the assigned task although time for submission of report/recommendations is already over”.
“Generally, Member-Secretary of inter-departmental committee is supposed to play key role in preparation of agenda for the meeting(s) and then pursue matter vigorously with the head of the panel but because of their inaction the committee fails to hold deliberations and submit reports well in time thereby defeating the objective behind constitution of such committees”, sources informed.
It is pertinent to mention here that EXCELSIOR has exclusively reported on the functioning of inter-departmental committees a number of times and in every report thrust was laid on evolving of monitoring mechanism so that reports/recommendations are submitted timely and roadmap is chalked out for resolving the issues.
“Ever since the abrogation of Article 370, the Government of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir paid serious attention towards almost all the issues relating to providing of good governance and accordingly through different Government orders committees were constituted to handle important matters”, sources said.
They further said, “Government wants to ensure that all those inter-departmental committees which have not submitted their report till date act immediately and furnish recommendations to the Government”, adding “the mechanism being evolved by the Government will also ensure timely accomplishment of task to be assigned to such committees in future”.
It is worthwhile to mention here that from time to time Administrative Secretaries were also directed by the Government to ensure submission of reports by the committees which have members from their respective departments within the specified time-frame but compliance was not up to the mark.
Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary has directed the Administrative Secretaries to seek approval with regard to deputations outside UT through mobile based communication viz official trips, trainings, workshops etc under emergent circumstances to be followed formal note on e-office.
Moreover, it has been directed that attendance of the field officials be ensured preferably through GPS facial recognition application, if biometric attendance cannot be used. “The process of linking biometric attendance with salary be initiated and shall be reviewed after 15 days and data regarding release of salary without biometric be submitted to General Administration Department on monthly basis”, read the instructions.
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