Srinagar, Nov 12: In what may be called a virtual confession of not having records of appointment of over 990 officials, including two district and sessions judges, the Jammu and Kashmir government has requested all its administrative departments to provide ‘supporting documents’ in order ‘to establish the genuineness of their appointments’, before November 15, to the committee headed by principal secretary, finance department.
According to sources, officials were surprised to see the names of the two judicial officers in the list whose records were verified by the High Court at the time of their joining the service.
Though the initial appointment of a judicial officer as ‘munsiff’ is made by the government, their records are later maintained by the High Court, the officials pointed out, adding that the government does not appear to have approached the High Court in this connection.
Pointing out that the salary of over 990 officials have been withheld since the rolling out of JK-HRMS (human resource management system) in October 2022, the database in view of the non-availability of their initial appointment orders, the general administration department (GAD) in its office memo dated October 31, has sought a number of ‘supporting documents’ in order ‘to establish the genuineness of the appointment of these employees’. Of these, the highest number of 541 employees are from the health and medical education department, followed by 128 from irrigation and flood control department, and 83 from education department.
The others include industries and commerce (40), home department (36), jal shakti (31), public health engineering (23), agriculture production (26), consumer affairs and public distribution (20), finance (10), forests (15), general administration, PWD, department and hospitality & protocol (10 each), revenue (18), rural development department (11), science and technology (13).
These supporting documents include authenticated first page of service book indicating relevant entries regarding initial appointment, recommendation of SSB/PSC etc. (in case of direct recruitment), entries in muster roll or in allied record regarding payment of wages before regularisation (in case of regularisation of contractual/daily wager/ad-hoc etc.), reference of appointment in record (e.g. DPC minutes/Quasi permanent order notified seniority etc.), entries regarding initial appointment in Pay Acquaintance Roll/Allied record, reference of Archives Department/Govt. Gazette, any other document. These documents need to be submitted to the GAD before November 15 in order to be passed on to the committee headed by the principal secretary, finance department which also has director, general accounts and treasuries, besides representatives of the general administration department (GAD), ARI & training, and department of law, justice and parliamentary affairs, not below the rank of additional secretary as its members.
The JK-HRMS was launched in October 2022 so as to provide an integrated platform for employees related services like maintenance of their service records in digital format, postings and promotions, GP Fund and income tax statement etc., apart from monitoring employees performance and their property statements. The government had ordered all the drawing and disbursing officers to disburse salary for the month of October 2022 in favour of only those employees who have registered or updated their service details on the JK-HRMS, and the concerned DDOs have verified the same.
Justifying the decision, a senior officer in the UT administration said that the GAD has received supporting documents in respect to the appointment of a number of these employees.
The issue regarding remaining employees, whose number has been reduced to 600 – 700, will also get sorted out in the next few days, he added.–(The Indian Express)
