Red tape error leaves PWD officials in lurch

A bureaucratic error has left in the lurch senior engineers of the Public Works Department (PWD) with many of them excluded from the seniority list - and thus denied of consequential promotion.

Over a year after the Supreme Court upheld the state government’s law providing reservation in promotion for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes with consequential seniority, the exercise to implement the order seems to be muddled in confusion over service rules and promotion eligibility date. As a result, many officials are running from pillar to post.

In March 2018, the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) published the seniority list of chief engineers by including those who were promoted with independent charge Under Rule 32 of the Karnataka Civil Service Rules (KCSR) with the eligibility date for promotion as May 5, 2007. More than 100 engineers who had retired from similar posts since then were also to be benefited.

However, the revised seniority list published on September 6 has excluded all the officials who were promoted under Rule 32, denying them a chance for the regularisation of their seniority.

“I have been working as a chief engineer with independent charge since 2007. After seeing that my name has been dropped in the revised list, I have been running to DPAR office every other day and have even moved the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal seeking correction,” a senior official told DH.

Another “blunder” in the revised list was the decision to fix May 31, 2018 as the date of promotion instead of May 5, 2007, a retired engineer said.