CSS Forums - Last minute bid to cut powers of Bhagwandas fails;

ISLAMABAD: In a scandalous coincidence with the government’s notification appointing Justice (retd) Bhagwandas as the head of the high-powered promotion board for civil service elevations, a government MP on Thursday presented in the NA a committee report to amend the law to replace the chairman FPSC by a prime minister’s nominee as the head of the promotion board.
Interestingly, the same day when the NA committee’s report was presented before the National Assembly, the Establishment Division, which is the division of the prime minister, formally convened a two-day meeting of the Central Selection Board (CSB) under Justice (retd) Bhagwandas on December 31, 2010 and January 1, 2011. The CSB recommends promotions in BS-20 and BS-21 in civilian bureaucracy.
Chairman FPSC Justice Bhagwandas, who is now also the chairman of the CSB, confirmed it to The News that he would be presiding over the promotion board meeting on December 31, and January 1, 2011. The chairman said that later he would get busy in CSS interviews.
Now a fundamental question arises whether the government would drop the bill from the National Assembly or would get it passed to demonstrate yet another show of administrative chaos where one hand of the regime does not know what the other is doing. In case the government pursues the bill and get it passed from parliament, it would lead to politicisation of top-level promotions in civil bureaucracy.
After successfully resisting Bhagwandas from heading the CSB for two years, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was finally compelled early this week to formally appoint the chairman FPSC as chairman of the CSB too, as provided in the law. However, the development that took place in the National Assembly on Thursday raised serious apprehensions about the Gilani regime’s real motives.
It is generally believed that Bhagwandas’ appointment as the Chairman of the CSB would ensure merit-based promotions in civilian bureaucracy, which did not see any meeting of the CSB for the last one year because of the Prime Minister Secretariat’s resistance to allow the retired justice’s appointment as the chairman of the promotion board.
Since late 2008, the CSB was being chaired by PM’s own bureaucratic aide — the secretary establishment — following an ordinance issued to remove the chairman FPSC as the chairman of the CSB.
With the year 2010 about to end, not even a single meeting of the high-powered CSB has been convened this year despite a clear policy decision in 2008 that at least four meetings of the board would be convened in one year.

[url]http://old.thenews.com.pk/24-12-2010/ethenews/t-2878.htm[/url]