Minnie sets team to vet ‘relaxed’ rules

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Chief secretary Minnie Mathew on Monday set up a standing committee of officers to “critically examine” all requests seeking exemption from or relaxation of any government rule by various departments. This is a major and first-of-its-kind administrative initiative by the chief secretary and is expected to help in ending discrimination and bring “consistency and uniformity” in the decision making.

The committee would be headed by senior IAS official Chaya Ratan (special chief secretary, home). Other members include special chief secretary of general administration, principal secretary or secretary finance, GAD secretary (services), law secretary and deputy secretary of GAD. The state departments receive a large number of applications from people in the government and outside to take decisions either in relaxation of rules or total exemption from them. Till now, such requests were forwarded by the departments to the CS and then to the Chief Minister who is final authority in this regard.

“The analysis of file disposal clearly shows that the decision making is discriminatory. People with connections at political and administrative wings manage to get their files cleared while the aam admi continues to suffer,” a senior official told this newspaper explaining the objective behind the new initiative. Sources said thousands of files relating to relaxation of rules were pending with the CMO of which only select files will be cleared in any dispensation.

As per the new initiative, the committee will meet on a fixed date every fortnight and the departments would have to send all the requests they receive to the committee two days before the meeting. The departments would also have to justify the proposal. The committee would initially look into requests pertaining to relaxation of minimum service or qualifications for promotions, eligibility criteria for compassionate appointments, medical claims and rules in respect of inter-district and inter-zonal transfers. Sources told this newspaper that the chief secretary wanted this committee to gradually expand its operations to non-employees issues also. For instance, the committee will also ex-amine the relaxation of rules for building permissions, an officer said.