The central government has appointed nine private sector experts as Joint Secretaries in various ministries.
The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension had invited applications for the posts of joint secretary-rank officers through ‘lateral entry’ mode in June last year.
The Appointment Committee of the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleared the appointments.
According to a government notification, the nine joint secretaries have been appointed for a period of three years or till further orders, whichever is earlier. The appointments are made on contract basis and their pay grade is at Level 14 of the pay matrix as per the Seventh Central Pay Commission.
The nine new joint secretaries and their ministries are Amber Dubey (Civil Aviation), Arun Goel (Commerce), Rajeev Saksena (Economic Affairs), Sujit Kumar Bajpayee (Environment, Forests), Kakoli Ghosh (Ministry of Agriculture), Saurabh Mishra (Financial Services), Dinesh Dayanand Jagdale (New and Renewable Energy), Suman Prasad Singh (Road Transport and Highways) and Bhushan Kumar (Shipping).
The posts of joint secretaries have been manned by officers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS), Indian Forest Service (IFoS) and Indian Revenue Service (IRS) among others who are selected through a three-phase meticulous selection process undertaken by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
For the lateral entry programme, the centre had invited applications from private sector professionals above 40 years of age and with 15 years or above of work experience in specific fields such as economic affairs, civil aviation, commerce etc. for 10 posts in June last year. In response to Centre’s advertisement, at least 6,077 applications were received last year.
UPSC in April had declared the result of the recruitment process carried out by it and recommended the nine names for selection in various ministries. Interestingly, UPSC could not identify any candidate for the revenue department.
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According to a government notification, the lateral entry scheme was aimed at bringing in fresh ideas and new approaches to governance and also to augment manpower.