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Undue promotions at an institute under the apex body for biomedical research in the country, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), led to irregular payments of over Rs 2 crore, found a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report on autonomous bodies released on December 21, 2022.
ICMR is an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) falls under it.
Between 2009 and 2019, at least 14 scientists at NICED, Kolkata, were granted untimely promotions, the report said. The effective step-up dates were ante-dated by up to 34 months, resulting in irregular payments of Rs 2.07 crore.
In 2007, the ICMR formulated the Health Research Scientists Cadre Rules, 2007. A provision under these rules, Flexible Complementing Scheme (FCS), allowed for the promotion of scientists based on proven merit and records of research.
FCS is only applicable to those holding Group A scientific posts in scientific and technological departments, according to the Department of Personnel Training (DoPT) under the Centre.
Group A scientists are Class I Gazetted officers. Qualifications covered under the FCS include a master’s degree in natural or agricultural sciences or a bachelor’s degree in engineering, technology or medicine.
The irregular promotions at NICED Kolkata “were in contravention of the aforementioned instructions of DoPT, which stipulated that such promotions would be effective from a prospective date after the same had been approved by the competent authority,” the CAG report noted.
“At present, the DoPT instructions regarding in-situ promotions under FCS are being fully complied with and no retrospective promotion had been granted to the scientists of the institute during 2019-20,” said a November 2020 reply by NICED.
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The institute, however, did not offer any comment on the cases of promotions granted earlier to 2019-20 with retrospective effect, as pointed out in the audit.
”In a later reply from December 2021, it argued that such policy decisions are taken at the ICMR headquarters and the case in point is not an institute-specific issue,” CAG said.
CAG’s compliance audit report from 2017 found similar promotion irregularities at the ICMR headquarters and its three institutes in Delhi-NCR. It requested the Union health ministry to take corrective measures to address the issues, but no such steps have been taken, the recent report noted.
“Cases of promotions with effect from retrospective dates, in violation of DoPT orders, have been noticed in other centres of ICMR (Para 11.5 of CAG Report No. 12 of 2017),” the report said.
The Ministry should review all cases of retrospective promotion, fix responsibility and effect recoveries from the beneficiaries of such irregular action, it added.