The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) said retired government officials accepting jobs in private sector organisations without the mandatory cooling off period constitutes serious misconduct.

It said all central government organisations should mandatorily obtain vigilance clearance before offering post-retirement jobs to bureaucrats.

It issued an order to secretaries of all central government departments, chiefs of banks and public sector undertakings.

Why has CVC issued new rules?

• 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. 

• The CVC 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 CVC order said that 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.

• Quite often, cooling off period, as prescribed under the rules of organisations concerned, is not observed before taking up such offers.

• 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.

Key points of the new rules:

• The retired government officer is to be considered for post-retirement engagement only on receipt of vigilance clearance/vigilance inputs.

• The procedure for engaging retired government officers should be transparent with equal opportunity to all those who are willing to offer their services. 

• The post to be filled up on contractual or consultancy basis should at least be advertised on the website of the organisation concerned at appropriate place and should be available in the public domain.

• All government organisations may 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 rules and guidelines should incorporate the procedure for seeking or obtaining permission before accepting offers from private sector entities during the cooling off period if not in existence.

• In respect of retired officers belonging to all India services, Group A officers of central government or their equivalent in other organisations owned or controlled by central government, before offering employment to them on contractual/consultancy basis, vigilance clearance from the employer organisation, from which the government officer had retired, should be necessarily obtained. 

• In case a retired officer served in more than one organisation, vigilance clearance should be obtained from all the organisations where the officer had served in the previous 10 years. 

• In case, no reply is received from the erstwhile employer(s) within 15 days of sending communication by speed post to them, a reminder may be sent to them for expediting vigilance clearance. 

• However, in case no reply is received from the erstwhile employer within 21 days of sending initial communication to them, it may be considered as ‘deemed vigilance clearance for the person concerned’. 

• Later on, if it is found that the ex-employee was involved in any vigilance related matter or was not clear from vigilance point of view, the erstwhile employer organisation would be responsible for all consequential actions.

• 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.

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