2 IAS officers seek 1-year relaxation in promotion

JAIPUR: Ignoring service rules in promotion of IPS officers, the state government has opened a Pandora’s box. After IAS officers of 1993 batch took advantage of the government’s callousness, the junior officers too are demanding out-of-turn promotion.
In a letter to chief secretary O P Meena, IAS officers from 2002 batch, Ashutosh A T Pednekar and Prithvi Raj has asked state government to give them one-year relaxation in their next promotion.
Both the officers in their letter have highlighted those recent cases where government has overruled obligatory number of service years in promoting IAS and IPS officers. Eleven promotee officers from 2002 have also joined Pednekar and Prithvi Raj and will be giving their representation to Meena in coming days.
As per the rules, it is mandatory for IAS officers to have minimum 16 years of service to get promotion from selection grade to super time scale. Similarly, minimum 25 years of service is required to reach to the post of principal secretary which is equivalent to additional director general (ADG) rank in police.
However, these rules were tweaked by the state in promoting IPS officer Sanjay Agrawal (Police Commissioner, Jaipur) and Hemant Priyadarshy who were elevated from the rank of IG to ADG on January 2. Both are from 1992 batch but joined the services a year later, completing only 24 years in service.
Based on that, later six IAS officers from 1993 Tanmay Kumar, Akhil Arora, Alok, Aparna Arora, Shikhar Agrawal and Sandeep Verma put their foot down. All of them were also promoted from secretary rank to principal secretary though none of them were entitled for that promotion.
Faux pas by department of personnel (DoP) has now put government in fix. “Demand of 2002 batch officers is not unjustified. State cannot have different rules for different set of officers” said a senior official.