Ministers’ PS, deputy secretary, directors to undergo training on file noting, drafting etc.

PRIVATE secretaries of union ministers such as M Venkaiah Naidu (Parliamentary affairs), Nitin Gadkari (road transport and highways), Suresh Prabhu (railways), Jayant Sinha (MoS, finance), Rajiv Pratap Rudy (skill development and entrepreneurship) etc. among other deputy secretary or director-ranked officers will undertake a 3-day-long orientation programme beginning March 28 on file noting and drafting, office procedure, parliamentary procedure, budget procedure, purchases procedure and…

right to information. The participants also include the officers on special duty of a number of ministers and also of the Vice President of India. Altogether 130 officers who are joining the ministries for the first time under the Central Staffing Scheme will be imparted training at the Institute of Secretariat Training and Management (ISTM), New Delhi.

“The programme is designed for officers of the rank of Director and Deputy Secretary joining the Ministries/Departments for the first time under the Central Staffing Scheme. List of such officers, who have joined various Ministries/Departments from 18th December, 2014 to 9th February, 2016 is attached” said an office memorandum, dated March 2, 2016 and issued by the government’s personnel department DoPT. Understandably, there is no course fee, and the training period will be counted as “on duty”.

All the officers who will be imparted training are those who have joined the Centre under the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. 

During the UPA-II regime, the then cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar began a new training module even for joint secretary-ranked officers to develop their writing skills, after it was found that many officers fail to write cabinet notes with clarity, creating problem ahead of the cabinet meetings.