Govt tweaking order to appoint secys, OSDs

The government is tweaking its earlier blanket ban on appointing private secretaries and Officers on Special Duty (OSDs) who served in previous governments.

The order was issued following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's instruction that no minister should appoint officers who served UPA ministers as private secretaries or OSDs.

However, the wording of the directive, about private secretaries or OSDs who served in “previous governments” led to confusion. If one goes by the phrase, even those who served in the previous NDA regime would not be eligible to be considered for posts in ministers' offices.

To clear this anomaly, the government is now tweaking the directive, sources said. The plan is to only ban the appointment of private secretaries and OSDs who served more than three years in the UPA government.

Meanwhile, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, led by the prime minister, on Tuesday cleared the appointment of Nitesh Kumar Jha as Officer on Special Duty to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

Appointments of two other OSDs, for Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Railway Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, were also cleared.