Lateral entry recruitment still on the table, confirms Union Minister Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said the government is still open to lateral entry recruitment and that the plan has not been abandoned yet. The lateral entry is referred to as the appointment of specialists, including those from the private sector, in the government departments. "We are still open to it (lateral entry recruitment). It is not being abandoned," the minister said during a press conference on '11 Years of Seva and Transformative Governance' here. Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said the initiative started with a very noble intention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. "No, we have not suspended (lateral entry) it," he added. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) had in August last year cancelled its advertisement to fill key posts in government departments through the lateral entry, amid a political row over the lack of a reservation provision for those positions.The Commission had, on August 17, 2024 issued a notification for the recruitment of 45 posts -- 10 of joint secretaries and 35 of directors or deputy secretaries -- through lateral entry. The decision, however, had ignited criticism from the opposition parties, which claimed that it undermined the reservation rights of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). Singh said that lateral entry happened before the Modi government came. "The most important, the most famous lateral entry in the government of India since 1947 has been that of Dr Manmohan Singh, who went on from one position to the other position and finally ended up as Prime Minister. And there have been Montek Singh Ahluwalia (former deputy chairman of erstwhile Planning Commission) and so many other lateral entries," the minister said.

He said the government tried to institutionalise it by putting it through the UPSC. "So, like I said, we are open to it," Singh said during the conference being addressed by senior officials of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) and Department of Pension & Pensioners' Welfare -- all under the Union Personnel Ministry. To a question on cases of misuse of OBC and disability quota benefits by the government employees being looked into by the Centre, a senior DoPT official said there is one such instance. "Post Pooja Khedkar (case), we have put a lot of mechanisms in place, both for PwBD (Persons with Benchmark Disabilities), as well as for OBC and EWS (Economically Weaker Section) candidates... We also received a lot of complaints on social media, which we thoroughly investigated, thoroughly inquired. And in most of the cases, we did not find anything negative," said A P Das Joshi, Additional Secretary, DoPT. He said there has not been any specific case in which an officer has been discharged or the government has taken action. "There is one case that we are still investigating, but whatever the final result will be, action will be taken accordingly," Joshi said.

The Centre had last year discharged Khedkar, former probationary civil servant, from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). She has been accused of cheating and wrongly availing OBC and disability quota to ensure her selection in the government service. Addressing the presser, the minister mentioned the government's efforts that reflected the changing face of governance under Prime Minister Modi. “For the first time since Independence, a government has taken pride in doing away with redundant rules rather than creating new ones,” Singh said, citing the repeal of over 1,600 outdated provisions — many of them colonial-era legacies — as a strong message of trust in citizens, particularly India’s youth. “We combined human concern with technology to create solutions that respect the dignity of individuals,” he said, recalling how over 19,000 long-pending promotions were expedited to bring relief to officials who had served without timely career progression. These measures, he said, reflected an approach that viewed policy through the lens of empathy. The minister said that the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) now handles over 26 lakh complaints annually with a 95-96 per cent disposal rate. The CPGRAMS allows citizens to raise grievances against government departments online.