K B Jandial
It was very pleasant for most of the Jammuites to read the heading of one of the news stories on the front page of Daily Excelsior of April 16, “8 JKAS Officers promoted”. So far, we have always been reading “KAS” officers but today your newspaper has reflected the real name of the Service. Ever since State’s premier administrative service was constituted, ithas been named as “Jammu & Kashmir Administrative Service” but in Govt orders and in the media, it has always been written as “KAS” and also popularly called as such. Jammu’s name was eclipsed in the Govt orders for unknown reasons. And there was no reaction also over shortening the name of the Service as well as its abbreviation by eliminating “Jammu”.
Last month, the Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha used JKAS word with the name of the District Information Officer, Udhampur Sajad Bashir Somberia in his condolence message on his untimely demise. It gave food for thought to many of us and found that ‘Jammu’ word was prefixed with the State’s premier Administrative Service right from its inception and it was Lt. Governor who thought it appropriate to mention the actual name of the service. After use of JKAS by him, it is now the duty of the Govt of the day to describe the Officers of this service as JKAS instead of KAS and respect Jammu’s identity.
Similarly, the other two premier services of the Police &Accounts too have ‘Jammu’ prefixed with their services which along with JKAS constitute the Combined Services for which the J&K Public Service Commission conducts prestigious competitive examination for recruitment. These are Jammu & Kashmir Police (Gazetted) Service written as “KPS” and Jammu and Kashmir Accounts (Gazetted) Service written as “KAS (Acctts)”. But these should be written as JKPS and JKAS (Acctts) to reflect their actual name. Another important service is Jammu & Kashmir Forest Service which should be written JKFS.
After having rightly used JKAS by no less than the highest constitutional authority in UT, the Chief Secretary hopefully would direct all departments to use the correct abbreviations of the services and do not remove ‘J’ ( representing Jammu) in Govt orders and official communication and also in GAD’s official website that indicates seniority list of these officers. Officially describing these four important services without prefixing ‘Jammu’ is becoming a sensitive beingan issue of its identity.The media should also start describing these services by prefixing Jammu. While the Govt would take its own time to take cognizance of this distortion that has crept in over the years, the local officers of these services should start using correct abbreviations with their names, be it with their names plates or in every official letter they sign. This is the first step in asserting their identity. Moreover, the officers by doing so would not be violating any service rule as it is the correct name of the service of which they are the member.
(The author is former Member J&K PSC, Jammu)
(feedback:kbjandial@gmail.com)
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