“Cutting edge” state civil service officers may take part in military-civil joint programmes

STATE civil service officials who are “working at cutting edge level in the districts” may get a chance to participate in mid-career interaction between the Armed Forces and civil officers being organized at Ranchi between November 18 and 20. The topic of the programme is “Developing Synergy in Civil Military Responses”. “In case officers from All India Services are…
not available, kindly depute officers belonging to the State Civil Services (SCS) who are working at cutting edge level in the districts”, said a DoPT letter dated October 29, 2013, which was addressed to chief secretaries of 10 select states, requesting them to nominate civil officers for the programme.
The letter, however, has made it clear that preferences will be given to All India Service officers. The DoPT’s training division wants chief secretaries to nominate one official each from Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Services.
The programme will be held at the headquarters of South Western Command of 23 Infantry Division, located at Ranchi in Jharkhand.
These programmes of interactions between the Armed Forces and Civil Services officers are being organised to enhance exposure of civil officers to the military activities so that they would be able to “meet unforeseen situations at short notices”. But very often, state civil servants working at the ground level don’t get any such an exposure.
The 10 states which are nominating officers for this joint interaction programme are Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand.