In a departure from the previous UPA government’s appointment system, the NDA has decided against posting top officials to any ministry if the minister is from the same state.
This is being done to prevent any possible vested interest while taking policy decisions, sources told Deccan Herald.
While selecting bureaucrats for various ministries, the Appointments Committee on the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is ensuring that its ministers and officials to be posted in the ministry should not belong to the same state.
The ACC is selecting officials based on merit and their previous experience while appointing them in any department rather than giving preference to ministers choice of person for important posts like secretary, additional secretary, joint secretary or director.
This is mainly to prevent any tactical understanding or possible collusion between the official and the minister in decision making, sources said.
In the previous UPA government, ministers had more say in appointing senior officials within their ministry. In most of the cases, the minister’s choice always ended up with his own state bureaucrat or his close acquaintances, sources said.
Aiming for continuity in policy execution, the government is also planning a fixed tenure for all top officials. At present, only the Cabinet Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, the CBI director and directors of India's intelligence agencies (IB and RAW) get an assured tenure of at least two years.
The Prime Minister’s Office is working on extending the tenure system to rest of the secretary-level officers to bring accountability among officials in decision making, provide job security as well as continuity in programme implementation.
Recently, the government appointed some additional secretary rank officials to key departments like Agriculture, Central Vigilance Commission and Commerce with tenures ranging from two to four years.
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