One Year, Many Circulars: Hunt for a JS-level officer to head Raebareli-based aviation university continues

ON SEPTEMBER 3, 2014, DoPT issued a circular to state chief secretaries and union secretaries to nominate eligible candidates for the post of project director (joint secretary level) at Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University (RGNAU) to be located at Raebareli, which is incidentally Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency. It would have passed as just another office circular, had the government not issued at least four such circulars earlier to hunt for…
an officer eligible for the post, and more importantly, the one who is willing to take up the responsibility. It was July 11, 2013, the then union cabinet approved the proposal of setting up the aviation university at Raebareli, following which a circular was issued on October 3, 2013 to search for the project director, a post created at the rank of a joint secretary.
On November 22, 2013, DoPT re-circulated the RGNAU vacancy notice giving more time for the officers to apply. “…since no response has been received from the eligible officers, it has been decided to once again circulate the post of Project Director (Joint Secretary Level), Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University (RGNAU) under the Ministry of Civil Aviation on deputation basis,” the November 22 letter signed by DoPT director M Devaraj said.
BoI could not ascertain whether there were any more official communications in the next couple of months, but on March 19, 2014, the advertisement was issued again, this time probably giving more flexibility, as there was no insistence that the selected officer would be based at Raebareli. The circular said: “Headquarter would be Delhi”. But before the general elections, no candidate could be finalized.
And now on September 3, 2014, the new government re-circulated the post giving one-month deadline for nominating the names of eligible officers.
The selected officer will be a single point contact with oversight of execution for the construction work on RGNAU. And the officer will be the nodal authority to co-ordinate with Airports Authority of India, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Academy and ministry of civil aviation.
But the question remains: why no officer empanelled as joint secretary is willing to take up this post? Or should the post itself be downgraded to attract officers?