Suspension of IAS officers

 

Today's flash news in media is the suspension of two IAS officers in kerala, as if they have been punished! Suspension is.only keeping the officials away from the official records to avoid possible manipulations! They get paid 50% of the emoluments during this period, for not working! After the departmental enquiry to be initiated,  the disciplinary authority has to decide whether the officials had erred and whether punishment needed to be awarded! By all probability they would.be reinstated with a warning, treating the period of suspension as service enabling them to draw full salary for the period they did not do any work! The media do not report these facts correctly, I feel

Postponing elections

 While it is welcome that the Election Commission (EC) has decided to postpone the by elections in 14 constituencies responding to representations, the timing of the postponement declaration might draw the ECI to judicial scrutiny, I am afraid. While no political parties may challenge the decision, postponing the declared election date after the last date for filing the nominations has created a peculiar situation that needs to be scrutinized by the judiciary. As per the original schedule the polling has to take place within 14 days from the last date of filing nominations and the model code of conduct would be in effect till the poll date. By deferring the poll date by a week after more.than a week from last date for filing nominations has given one extra week for the candidates for campaigning. Also the period of model code of conduct has been extended by a week to the detriment of the interest of the constituency. The extended period of campaigning may be a boon for those with resources, it may be a bane for the independents and candidates of smaller parties. If any of them challenge the decision, the court may annul the process requiring a fresh notification and process, I am afraid

Advance reservation period

 

The move of the railways to cut the advance reservation period (ARP) is an ill advised one, I feel. This move will only increase the pressure on the reservation system of railways, making it slower to add to the frustration of thise who plans the journey in advance. This could be clear to the railways from the present difficulties faced by those who want to book tickets under Tatkal scheme,  for which there is only a small time window of 24 hours! The ARP was limited to 60 days in the manual Era considering the difficulty in maintaining large number of manual registers, but subsequent to full computerization the period was increased to the present level, much to the relief of travelling public. It is not.clear why such a sudden move inconveniencing those who plan their journey well in advance has been made by the railways. Any new decision taken by a utility services like railways should be to the advantage of the ultimate user and not otherwise.  Hence I urge upon the railways to immediately withdraw the instructions and restore the facilities, especially considering the fact that a 365 days window is made available to the foreign tourists!

Hoax security threats

 It is a matter of concern that hoax callers are taking the airlines for a ride in the past few days, disrupting the airlines services as well as some train services. However, I wonder why the security personnel are not bold enough to call the bluff of the callers and give clearance to operate the schedules without disruptio, given the type of security checks undertaken at the airports! (It is another matter that they cannot take that risk in the case of trains). The air passengers and luggage are put through severe checks, including body frisks and also making the passengers to separately screen the mobile chargers, mobile phones, wallets and even asking to remove belts worn, that the security personnel should be confident to declare the flight safe for travel, I feel. In spite of such severe screening inconveniencing passengers, on receipt of a mail or phone call, they immediately put the flight on hold again inconveniencing the passengers! I feel this amounts to harassment of poor passengers.

Work pressure

 In a short span of a week, reports have come in about the death/suicide of.employees due to 'work pressure'. While the first one was the death of an employee of consultancy firm EY due to heart failure, the other.two.were cases of suicide, one of.an.executive of private sector bank and the other of a manager of a public sector bank in Mumbai. It is in the interest of everyone to find out the root cause of such happenings. While many including the human rights.commission have taken cognisance of the death of EY employee and condemned the 'inhuman' work culture prevailing in the firms, not much have been talked about the other two.

I am a retired senior executive of a major public sector bank in the country with more than 33.years of service experience and I would say the pressure of work has always been there, but we were able to face it and handle it and never thought of ending the life. But in the current generation, the ability to absorb pressure appears to be minimum, may be because of the surroundings in which they grew up! I am not advocating that the present work atmosphere in all walks of life is conducive to the well being of the employee. But in the rat race, there are others who are willing to accept the pressure in the interest of their career progression and hence everyone is forced to accept the scenario. But each individual should take a call about what is the threshold which he/she can go to and decide whether to continue or quit instead of paying by their life.

The HR department everywhere has become merely recruitment and promotion departments and nothing much is done by them to maintain the 'health' of Human Resources, I am afraid.

It is high time the employers and employees really understood and practiced the concept of Work Life balance to save the situation 

Fabricated cases

 The chargesheet filed by the CBI in the ISRO espionage case exposes a very dangerous position vis a vis cases filed by the police. As per the charge sheet one officer of Kerala police could foist a false case on a foreign citizen and expand the case to implicate a renowned scientist of the country not only damaging his reputation, but also subjecting him to physical torture!! It is quite distressing to note that some senior IPS rank officials also contributed for sensationalising the case, for motives unknown. The media of the state also played into their hands by carrying out daily reports on the progress of the case and also running their own 'investigating.reports'!

Finally the Supreme Court came to the rescue of the accused and made them free and also ordered payment of compensation to the scientist . Now that the cbi has come out with their conclusions on the parts paid by the police officials, shouldn't the government recover the amount of compensation paid to the scientist from them?

The fact that one of the accused could rise in the force and become the chief of state police makes the case all the more serious. How can a citizen believe the veracity of the cases charged by such a force and what is the guarantee that the accused will get justice? The officers, with all the resources at their disposal,  will be able to fabricate or.mamufacture the evidence they require for the 'success' of the case. 

It is high time the 'impartial and independent' nature of kerala police is restored and citizens are assured of justice at any cost

Co operative societies as banks

 It is observed that Reserve Bank of India has been regularly releasing half page advertisements in newspapers informing the public that co operative societies are not authorised to use the word 'Bank' in their names as they are not registered under Banking regulation act and deposits with such societies are not eligible for insurance cover. However, as a regulator, other than releasing the ads, RBI does not appear to take any other steps against such mis leading acts of co operative societies . Bu unauthorisedly using the word Bank in their names these societies are cheating the public to keep their money with them,that too offering interest rate higher than that offered by regular banks. Thus the gullible public are lured to these entities not knowing the fact that their money is not at all safe there.

I would like to appeal to RBI to initiate some proactive steps to ensure against such unauthorised use of the name Bank by the societies. Proper legal action should be initiated against such entities by the RBI, I feel.

Equal treatment to all

 The devastating fire accident in Kuwait. I sincerely appreciate the steps taken by the state and central governments to console the bereaved family members in this hour of grief.  Any amount of monetary help to the family will not compensate the loss suffered by them, I feel. However, it is amusing to note that there have been demands to the central government to offer financial support of ₹50 lacs to each family, which I feel is an extreme request. While proper support to the family is the need of the hour, I wonder why the liability should fall on the exchequer. The company authorities have already confirmed that insurance cover is available to each employee/ worker. Offering any additional.amount over and above this will be seen as a misplaced sympathy to the 'pravasi'. Here I would also like to mention that such support is not offered for similar victims who have gone to other states of the country to eke out a living. Why such discrimination between people who have gone to other states and those who have gone to other countries, I wonder. I am writing this as a non resident keralite who had worked outside the state for about thirteen years, during which period we had not experienced any such care and support for such NRKs.

I would like to request the state government to treat such people.living in other states in the country also at par with those living in other countries

EVMs in LS polls

 During the second.phase of the ongoing LS elections, there have been complaints from many booths in kerala about slow polling , mal function of EVMs, bogus voting etc. I would like to.comment on all these from my own experience as a voter who cast his vote in the first 30 minutes of polling.

It is really a matter of shame that even after more.than 40 years since introduction of EVMs in elections, the Election Commission has not been able to ensure error free function on the machines. Admitting the face that being a machine it can fail any time, I wonder why the commission had not taken suitable steps to ensure standby arrangements to face such machine failures. Being a time bound procedure, we cannot afford to spend time to get the machine fault rectified by technicians. Arrangements should have been there to replace the faulty machines with stand by machines and save precious time. I pity those voters who were made to wait for hours during such technical faults. It is not clear whether the voting time was suitably extended in such booths.

From my experience in the booth, it was observed that the time taken by the machine to make a response was too long as the beep sound was heard after considerable lapse of time. It was also observed that the beep sound was very feeble , may be due to low charge of the machine. This was mentioned by me to the presiding officer.

Regarding the allegations of bogus voting, I fail to understand how an impersonator could cast a vote of another person using a duplicate id  card, when the electoral rolls were having the photo of the voter. Is it  not the responsibility of the polling official to tally the identity with the photo.available.on the rolls, I wonder. ( For that matter, I fail to understand why another photo id card is insisted on when the photos are available in the rolls)

Lok sabha polls

 Yet again comes another poll

My name is in the till

There are many parties n the fray

Dont know who are going to stay

     Arguments and counters galore

    Accusations and replies are more

     No parties are above the board

     Poor voters are getting bored

Government appears to be after opposition

Strange are their action and position 

Why are they afraid of critics

Who are not playing any tricks 

      Let democracy bloom like roses 

      And the country be devoid of any crosses

ELECTORAL.BONDS AND SBI

 During the last few days, the country's largest PSB has been in news for wrong reasons! All that the bank did was to obey directives from government and act as the government's agent in issue and redemption of electoral bonds! However, when the plea challenging the entire scheme was allowed by the SC who termed it illegal, the saga of SBI started! The court order to SBI to submit all the data pertaining to electoral bonds to election commission was the starting point. Obviously, SBI had not developed any matching mechanism as government had offered privacy to the purchasers of the bonds. However , the Bank took its own time to inform this position to the court, (which was.done on the last day of the time.granted!) which apparently infuriated them.

Here some points need to be pondered upon.

1. If SBI had submitted inability to furnish the matched data earlier, would.the SC have been satisfied or would the court have taken cognizance of the same.before the next hearing date fixed?

2. What did sc want to achieve by asking SBI to submit the entire data? Even if the fully matched data was made available , would anybody be able to confirm that the purchaser of the bond was.the person or.entity who donated it? It may be remembered that the bonds were bearer in nature and.could.have changed hands any number of times, before redemption!

And it.may also be seen that the parties had already declared the amount received by then through the bonds. If the court really wanted the country to know who had.contributed how much to each party, court could.have simply asked.the parties to submit their receipt.books for verification,  I feel.

As a former SBI staff, I feel at least the court could have avoided passing unwanted comments against the Bank, when the banks hands were tied to back to.make a defence.for.itself!

CONGRESS.MUKTH BJP?

 Of late, not a single day passes without news about somebody joining the ruling party, the BJP! And as has to be, majority of such turncoats is from the principal opposition party, the Indian National Congress. However,  one such news that came out today takes the cake and is truly surprising! Former Kolkota high court judge Abhijit Ganguly who resigned a day back announced joining BJP the very next day. 

One only wonders whether this action of the judge is politically or judicially correct! A judge who is expected to.deliver judgements even in cases where the government is one of the parties without any fear or favour becomes a part of the ruling patty the very next,day of his quitting.his post should definitely raise eye brows. Aren't there any service rules or Code of conduct that prevents the judges taking such decisions, as is the casen with employees of  others Government departments or PSUs? Normally for employees there is a cooling period of one year before joining any organisation that had any relation with the Government or psu! I really hope the supreme court will take suo motu cognizance of this act and call the bluff!

As regards the politicians joining the BJP, I feel it is high time PM Modi changed his slogan of making a congress mukt bharat to making a "Congress mukt BJP" the way congressmen are lured to the party