Govt becomes flexible as no joint secretary-ranked officer wants to be shifted out to Raebareli

WITH no joint secretary-ranked officer willing to be stationed in Uttar Pradesh’s Raebareli as the project director of yet-to-be-built Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University (RGNAU), the government has now given flexibility on the posting by issuing a fresh circular on March 19, 2014, whereby there is no insistence that the selected officer would be based out of Raebareli. The hunt for a joint secretary-level person for the Raebareli project actually began on…
October 3, 2013 when the DoPT first issued a circular. As the government failed to get any suitable officer for the post, it issued another circular dated November 22, 2013, giving one more month for the authorities to send the names of eligible officers. But the reality, as it turned out, was that no officer as senior as the joint secretary of the Government of India was willing to go to Raebareli to take up a project director’s post. Raebareli is a politically significant-yet-sensitive hotspot that elects UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to Lok Sabha. The selected officer, who will monitor the construction of the new university, will be posted for a period of three years. And the new circular of March 19 categorically said: “Headquarter would be Delhi”.
According to the circular, experiences in dealing with higher education administration, setting up of projects involving constructions, service matters and matters relating to aviation sector would be desirable.
The post is a Non-Central Staffing Scheme post to be filled up through the Civil Service Board (CSB) procedure.