New Delhi (11.06.2023): Even after a greater push by PMO for providing 10 lakh employments by December, 2023, around 1617 posts of Section Officer Grade are still lying vacant in the Central Secretariat till the end of year 2022. This is adversely affecting functioning of various department and ministries of the Central Government.
As per a recent RTI reply, DoPT has informed that there would be three hundred more vacancies coming in the month of July due to promotions from Section Officer to Under Secretary grade taking the overall vacancy to more than 1800 which will be approximately fifty percent of the sanctioned strength. ASOs of 2013 and 2014 batches are also eligible for the post of Section officers. So till 2022, there were total 1617 vacancies at the Section officer level while vacancies of all the grades were 2946 that is 23 per cent of the total 13,016 sanctioned posts up to May 1, 2023.
In November 2022, it was extensively reported in media that there are over 1600 vacancies in the Central Secretariat. Based on those reports, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge took up the issue and due to pressure from all across, the DoPT moved the proposal of promotion for all eligible ASOs however only 250 people got promotion and around 800 candidates are still waiting for promotion from the last one year even after being eligible and ample number of vacancies available.
CSS Forum, a representative body of all CSS officers recently wrote a letter to Dr Jitendra Singh, the concerned minister, to look into the matter on priority basis and informed him that if eligible officers are not given promotion before July 1, 2023 they are going to have financial loss of more than 10 thousand per month apart from the loss which they are already occurring. CSS Forum said, “If we consider the vacancies that will come on July 1 and in next few months due to cadre review, there will be around 3 thousand vacancies at section officer grade and it will have crippling effect on the functioning of the Central Government.
CSS officers are considered to be the backbone of Central Secretariat and known as institutional memory of the Central Government. A Section officer is effectively a repository of knowledge in the units of the Ministry/Department where he is posted. DoP&T agrees that the shortage of SOs is paralyzing the functioning of the Ministries/Departments eventually affecting the delivery of public services and there is urgent need for filling up the vacant posts of SO cannot be overstated.
