Opposition political clamour over lateral entry into the bureaucracy overlooks the fact that the 45 positions advertised by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is meant for specialised contractual jobs that require special talent not available with the government and that the scheme was sourced from the UPA regime, sources in the government said.Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, however, amplified the opposition attack by stressing that the lateral entry initiative was an “anti-national step” and meant to scuttle reservation for Schedule Castes (SCs), Schedule Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in the government jobs. “Reservation of SC, ST, and OBC classes is being openly snatched away by recruiting through lateral entry on important posts in various ministries of the central government,” Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, posted on X.Union Railway Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw countered Rahul Gandhi and stated that the lateral entry of private employees offering government jobs for a limited period was originally the concept of the Congress-led UPA regime and that the NDA government is only implementing it in a “transparent” manner through the UPSC to improve governance.“INC hypocrisy is evident on the lateral entry matter. It was the UPA government which developed the concept of lateral entry. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) was established in 2005 under the UPA government, chaired by Shri Veerappa Moily. The UPA-era ARC recommended the recruitment of experts to fill gaps in roles that require specialized knowledge,” Vaishnaw wrote on the social media platform.A senior officer said the lateral entry level appointments are done by the UPSC which has a better track record of all India recruitment in the last hundred years unlike nomination basis which was the route of getting into the government. The biggest example, said sources, of government benefiting from an outsider expert was Manmohan Singh who rose to become Prime Minister during the UPA regime under him the ARC gave a report for implementing this scheme. The UPA government, on the other hand, also recruited a senior functionary with a leading industrial house background into the power ministry on the nomination basis, a senior serving IAS officer pointed out. Senior serving and retired bureaucrats, including IAS officers, and experts businessline spoke to ascertain the need and outcome of the move designed to make bureaucracy professional and adapt to changing governance demands, believe there is a need for infusion of outsiders with domain knowledge into the government architecture due to growing intervention of technology to make delivery mechanism speedier and efficient.But, they also cautioned over the need to make recruitment policy more transparent and accountable to avoid subjectivity creeping into the contractual recruitment through the lateral entry.A glimpse of the positions advertised for the lateral entry makes it clear that the demand is for highly specialised jobs. For instance among the ten joint secretary level posts vacant is also for “emerging technology” in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY). At the level of 35 Director and Deputy Secretary posts advertised is a Director needed for “Integrated Nutrients Management” in Ministry of Agriculture.Experts are of the view that the lateral entry level scheme which is a great experiment successful in other developed democracies has come 70 years later in India, largely due to the reluctance of the IAS to give space to others including private sector specialists in running the government.Through the lateral entry, a private sector employee gets first three fixed years in the government and then two other promotions of one year each depending on the performance of that contractual babu.A former UPSC member said that the later entry officer should get a minimum of 5 years fixed tenure to get rid of uncertainty in the service. But, a former bureaucrat added to his suggestion by stating; on the basis of performance, the lateral entry officers should be allowed to be absorbed as in the case of Agniveers in the armed forces.
The government can think of absorbing 25 to 50 percentage of such intake of human resource into the bureaucracy depending on the demand in specialised ministries like that of finance, defence and telecom because they have left the private sector not to return.
Another suggestion officials offered was not to bring PSU employees through this stream into the mainstream bureaucracy because the whole idea is to inculcate the best private sector culture into government for desired outcomes. It’s also suggested that at the time of entry, persons should be assigned the task of the field he is expert of and not what is happening now, that they are being doled out jobs which regular Directors and Joint Secretaries don’t want to do. The whole bureaucratic system as of now is designed to thwart any meaningful intervention for the larger public good because the power and corruption flows through control freak mindset of babudom, observed one senior officer. SHARE
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https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/congress-criticises-lateral-entry-citing-threat-to-reservations-in-upsc/article68543565.ece
