Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha has has expressed serious concern in a letter to all departmental secretaries that "... despite existing guidelines, proposals for appointment or additional charge arrangements continue to be submitted for consideration of ACC at the eleventh hour, leaving the ACC with little time to adequately scrutinize the proposals which many a time, become a fait-accompli." The letter sent on December 10 adds that "also, despite reminders, the position with respect to CPSEs/Autonomous Organizations/Statutory Bodies/Tribunals, etc. is not being regularly updated on the ACC Vacancy Monitoring System (AVMS) with the result that monitoring of vacancies and advance planning to fill them up becomes difficult." It has now been specified that proposals not submitted to the Establishment Officer's office at least two months in advance of the date of vacancy/ending of the additional charge arrangement, as the case may be, would have to be accompanied by a "Delay Statement" duly signed by the Secretary of the Ministry or Department indicating the time taken at various stages of processing the proposal, the reasons for delay and the action taken to avoid such situations in future. "The position on AVMS should be updated within a period of seven days and a certificate to the effect that the position with respect to all posts pertaining to your Ministry or Department has been updated till last date of the previous month must henceforth be attached with all ACC proposals," the Cabinet Secretary said in his letter, specifying these instructions must be strictly complied with. The Cabinet Secretary's missive comes after the government's Establishment Officer (EO) Rajiv Kumar's strong letter to this effect to the Secretaries in April this year failed to have any impact.