Retired babus can't take up private jobs immediately

New Delhi The Central Vigilance Commission on Thursday said retired officials accepting jobs in private sector organisations without the mandatory cooling off period constitutes "serious misconduct".

In an order, it also said that all government organisations should mandatorily take vigilance clearance before offering post–retirement jobs to babus.

"It has been observed that on some occasions, immediately after their retirement from government organisations, retired officials are taking up full-time job/contractual assignments in private sector organisations," the CVC said in the order issued to secretaries of all central government departments and chiefs of public sector banks among others.

Quite often, cooling off period, as prescribed under the rules of organisations concerned, is not observed before taking up such offers, it said. "Post retirement acceptance of offer by retired government officials without observing cooling off period, constitutes a serious misconduct on their part," the probity watchdog said. All government organisations may, therefore, formulate appropriate rules and guidelines for its employees to ensure that post retirement, the cooling off period is mandatorily observed by them before accepting any offer from private sector entities, the order said.

The rules and guidelines should incorporate the procedure for seeking or obtaining permission before accepting offer from private sector entities during the cooling off period if not in existence, it said. The applicable service or conduct rules should also be revised and modified to ensure that, if required, appropriate action can also be initiated in case of violation of such rules by retired employees, the commission said. In the order, the CVC has outlined procedure for government organisations for obtaining vigilance clearance for retired-babus before employing them. "There is no defined procedure for seeking vigilance inputs before engaging retired government officials from the organisations where such retired officials were employed on full time basis, prior to their retirement," it said.

The commission has observed that the absence of a uniform defined procedure for obtaining vigilance clearance, before engaging retired officials by government organisations, sometimes leads to a situation where officials with tainted past or having cases pending against them are engaged by the government organisations, the order said. "Such a situation not only leads to unnecessary complaints/allegations of favouritism, but is also against the tenets of fairness and probity which is the basic principle governing the functioning of government organisations," it said.