Bihar CM defends centre’s lateral entry move

Speed Post News Network

Patna : Bihar CM and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar on June 11, 2018, strongly defended the Centre’s decision to allow lateral entry of experienced professionals as joint secretaries. Nitish termed the scheme as an experiment the need for which has arisen because of the paucity of IAS and IPS officers across the country.
Nitish charged successive Congress governments with downsizing the civil services and said it has left us in a position where we find it extremely difficult to meet many governance requirements.

Nitish said we are facing a situation where one Secretary rank IAS officer is holding charge of several departments. Despite having committed ourselves to creating new districts, we are hesitant to proceed as we may not have IAS and IPS officers for manning the administrative units as DMs and SPs, Nitish said while speaking to mediapersons here on the sidelines of his ‘Lok Samvad’  programme.

“This is the case with the states. The same must be with the Centre. A secretary, at the Centre, usually briefs the minister on important matters. But it is joint secretaries who does the necessary groundwork. When I was the Union Agriculture Minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, I had 18 joint secretaries working under me,” the Bihar CM said.

These instances indicate the gap between the requirement and the availability of officers. This experiment of lateral entry must have been thought of in this backdrop. Let us see if it works, Nitish said.

The government opening up senior-level bureaucratic posts in several departments to talented and motivated people even from the private sector has triggered a political controversy.