The West Bengal government has issued new guidelines restricting the transfer of Secretariat employees to directorates, regional offices, district offices or block-level establishments without prior approval from the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department.
The directive means individual state departments will no longer be able to move Secretariat staff to outside offices on their own. The proposed transfer must first be reported to the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department and receive its approval, according to a report by Bartaman Patrika.
Employees from lower-division assistant level and above in the state Secretariat are part of a common cadre. Their transfers have generally taken place between different departments within the Secretariat. The system was changed during the previous government, when several employees were sent on deputation-style assignments to district and block offices, while their salaries continued to be paid by the Secretariat.
Employee organisations had alleged that such transfers were sometimes used as punitive action against workers and leaders associated with opposing unions. The allegations were not limited to left-affiliated employee organisations; leaders considered disobedient within organisations influenced by the ruling party were also reportedly transferred through the same process.
Some Secretariat employees were sent from Kolkata to remote block offices in the hills of north Bengal, the report said. After a change in government, several of those employees returned to the Secretariat. The report also cited the later transfer of a senior leader of an organisation associated with the previous ruling party from the Chief Minister’s Secretariat to a block office in Darjeeling through the same mechanism.
The new approval requirement places the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department at the centre of decisions involving the movement of common-cadre Secretariat staff outside the state headquarters. It also creates a formal administrative checkpoint before such transfers can be implemented. The guideline is intended to prevent departments from making arbitrary transfers, according to the report.
