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Officers, employees of erstwhile LC may finally get some justice…!

June 15, 2022

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Constitution of a high level committee to look into the cases of ‘regularization’ of retired officers of erstwhile Legislative Council of J&K has given a ray of hope to scores of serving employees from the Upper House who are working on various posts of ‘other’ departments post reorganisation of state as Union Territory in 2019.
General Administration Department came out with an order early this month that brought cheers to many senior officials of the Legislative Council who retired during the last two years as their pension cases and other related issues post retirement remained unsettled for no fault of theirs.

Sources said post reorganisation of the state as UT, it is the employees of the legislature who have been hit hard on a number of fronts as both the Houses stand dissolved even as the mechanism of disbursing pension etc. to legislators stands regulated. While the brunt of change in the status of J&K is being borne out by all, it is mostly those officers who were on verge of retirement or had reached seniority are suffering most, sources said adding that post retirement issues while working with other departments and loss of promotional avenues that would have benefitted them in their parent department have left them in lurch.

Pertinently, while working in Legislative Council, these officials were governed by their ‘own’ service rules and retirement regulatory orders as the House had its full power and authority even for making recruitments and the government or GAD had no ‘jurisdiction’ to interfere in such matters. In other words both the Houses were working in an autonomous manner with own rules and powers that were conferred mainly on account of state’s own constitution.

However, by the ‘stroke’ of reorganisation act, the existence of the Houses as also their powers have ceased pushing the fate of around 200 employees in uncertainty. Sources said even though the government first ‘accommodated’ most of them in the Law department, facing saturation already the latter ‘pushed’ them further into other departments.

This displacement was done randomly, said the sources adding that this ‘forced’ or unwanted adjustment resulted in a situation where many of them have lost chances of promotion which was due in their parent department. There was a systematic and period approach of granting promotions and other benefits both in the Council , sources said, explaining further that the only grudge of employees was that these rules were quite old and needed to be revised.

Setting up of the committee is however result of consistent efforts of the officers who filed a number of representations to get justice. This has also rekindled hope for the serving employees who are expecting the outcome in terms of report of the panel of senior bureaucrats might address their issues as well.
The four member committee is being headed by Administrative Secretary Law Department and has three members as representatives\ officers of GAD, Finance and Law Department.