Haryana: Cabinet decides against increasing retirement age of government employees
Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar. (Express Photo by Sahil Walia) Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar. (Express Photo by Sahil Walia)
The Haryana Cabinet on Wednesday decided against increasing the retirement age of government employees to 60 years from current 58 years. Ahead of the 2014 polls, the then Bhupinder Singh Hooda led state government had decided to raise the retirement age to 60 years to woo more than 3.5 lakh employees. But a month after coming to the power, the Manohar Lal Khattar government had reversed the decision.
In another key decision, the Cabinet has decided to set up SC Commission — a step seen as an attempt to woo Dalits, who form 20 per cent of Haryana’s population. Last year, the government had formed a Cabinet Sub-Committee headed by Finance Minister Captain Abhimanyu to examine the issue of retirement age of officials and fixed tenure of heads of department.
Official sources say that the decision about not increasing the retirement age has been taken in view of the recommendations of the committee. However, the Cabinet has agreed for re-employment of officials in some departments. According to the recommendation of the committee, re-employment beyond the retirement age will be applicable only to departments involved in maintaining law and order, regulatory work, work of administrative importance, infrastructure development and basic public service.
The administrative department will assess the level and class of officials whose services need to be retained beyond the regular retirement age. The department will identify classes or categories of officials whose services are essential for efficient delivery of aims and objects of the organisation without adversely affecting promotional avenues for junior or other officials. The government had earlier decided to increase the retirement age of doctors up to 65 years. The retirement age of Group D employees, blind, physically challenged and judicial officers is 60 years in the state.
On Wednesday, the government accepted committee’s recommendations in which it had stated the tenure of head of department should not exceed three years. After three years, there will be re-allocation of work in respect of the official. The move to constitute the Haryana State Commission for Scheduled Castes has comes close on the heels of a 15-day strike by sanitation workers across urban areas in Haryana to demand regularisation of their services.
The Commission would be constituted to investigate and examine the working of various safeguards provided in the Constitution or under any other law for the welfare and protection of the Scheduled Castes. In another decision, the Cabinet said that any housing society in Haryana will no longer charge more than Rs 10,000 as transfer fee in case of change of ownership of an apartment. It also decided to offer one-time relief to regularise unauthorised commercial constructions.
Now, housing societies in Haryana will have fix charges for maintenance of common area and facilities on the basis of the size of the apartment. Further all existing societies will modify their bylaws accordingly and get these approved by the district registrar. At present, there is no provision under the rules with regard to the amount of transfer fee and maintenance charges. Also, a policy has been framed to provide one-time relief to bring unauthorised commercial constructions into conformity with the Building Code and other relevant Acts.
Cabinet on Wednesday also approved the creation of the post of vice-chairperson in the Haryana State Commission for Safai Karamcharis. The government also gave its nod for enhancement of petty grant of MLAs from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per annum from the current financial year.
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