Vigilance clearance made mandatory for Govt officials' post-retirement duties

Kolkata: A few days after the West Bengal government engaged former Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay as the chief advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has come with a new direction that made it mandatory for all government organisations to take vigilance clearance before offering post-retirement jobs on contractual or consultancy basis.

In an order issued to the Secretaries of all the Central Government Ministries and departments, chief of public sector banks among others, it is mentioned that the absence of a uniform procedure sometimes led to a situation where officials with tainted past or cases pending against them got engaged.

"In respect of retired officers belonging to All India Services, Group A officers of Central government or their equivalent in other organisations owned or controlled by the Central government, before offering employment to them on contractual/consultancy basis, vigilance clearance from the employer organisation, from which the government officials had retired, should be necessarily obtained," the letter cleared.

"In case a retired officer had served in more than one organisation, vigilance clearance should be obtained from all the organisations where the retired officer had served during a period of 10 years prior to his retirement," it added.

The CVC has also explicitly mentioned that the private sector should also follow the same procedure before employing retired government officials and warned that acceptance of such an employment offer without the completion of the mandatory cooling-off period "constitutes a serious misconduct".

"All government organisations may, therefore, formulate appropriate rules/guidelines for its employees to ensure that post-retirement, cooling-off period edgily observed by them before accepting any offer from private sector he rules/guidelines should incorporate a procedure for seeking/obtaining before accepting offers from private sector entities during the cooling-off period. The applicable service/conduct rules should also be revised/modified to ensure that, if required, appropriate action can also be initiated in case of violation of such rules by retired employees," it added.

The conduct rules should also be modified to ensure that if required, appropriate action can be initiated in case of any violation by the retired employees, said the Commission.