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| Blue-eyed manning top positions, eligible ones left waiting | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 14: Ex-Forest Minister Mian Altaf cared little about seniority, experience and cadre management while posting officers in the Agrostology wing of the forest department, leaving several senior officers disgusted and demoralised.
Transfer and posting orders issued during the last six years clearly indicate that the forest ministry of the previous NC-Congress coalition focussed solely on recommendations of colleagues, friends, relatives, legislators, ex-MLAs and opposition leaders. Statutory rules and orders stipulate that only an Assistant Soil Conservation Officer (ASCO) or Technical Assistant or Assistant Engineer (Agriculture) could be posted as Agrostologist and that too only if he/she possesses degree in Agronomy or in Soil Sciences or in Agricultural Chemistry besides having three years experience in Agrostology.
But these rules were kept at bay while posting a blue-eyed boy of NC, Mashood Ahmed as Agrostologist for Jammu region in the Forest Department. Born on the cadre of Agriculture Production Department, Mashood Ahmed has reportedly blessings of an ex-IAS officer turned politician. Sources said that it is this IAS officer whose influence has helped Mashood in improving his career prospects by managing inter-departmental transfer of service from the Agriculture department to Soil Conservation department.
Having joined the services in the year 1982, Mashood managed to get absorbed on the post of Soil Conservation Assistant (SCA) in December 1995. Records bear testimony to the fact that Mashood is simply graduate in agricultural sciences and has no specialisation in Agronomy or Soil Science or Agriculture Chemistry yet he was posted as Agrostologist Jammu against an available post in June 2014. He is working on the post which is a step higher than the post which he is mandated to hold according to his seniority.
He is Assistant Conservator of Soil (ACS) but the ex-Minister for Forest, Environment and Ecology Mian Altaf choose him to become Agrostologist for Jammu region for the reasons best known to him, something which he did with almost every officer of the Forest Department. By posting Mashood as Agrostologist Jammu, Altaf brought him at par with two other senior officers who are a step higher than Mashood.
N.A.Shahdad and T.A.Malik, both having the designation of Divisional Soil Conservation Officer (DSCO), were not even considered for the two posts of Agrostologist for Jammu and Kashmir regions respectively. Shahdad is District Soil Conservation officer (DSCO) Pulwama while T.A.Malik is senior scientist as well as Incharge Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWDP). Even they are from the Agriculture Department but seniority meant they should have been considered for these two posts since they had relatively more experience.
But the department thought otherwise and while justifying Mashood's transfer and posting as Agrostologist for Jammu region failed to even give an ordinary explanation of having bestowed Range Officer (RO)-Grade 1 Abid Nazir charge of Agrostologist for Kashmir region. Nazir has been brought several steps-up. Range Officers are categorised as Cass-VI officers as per the recruitment rules of the Soil Conservation Department and he is looking after a Class-II post i.e. almost four steps higher.
Altaf has left such a mess in the critically important Agrostology circle of the Forest Department that several foresters have taken court stay for continuing as range officers. They have outrightly refused to work on their original post. Taking cue from this, forest guards have been making all attempts to get posted as incharge foresters since these posts are by and large vacant across the state.
Official records of postings clearly indicates that professional competence was no criteria in the Forest Department during ex-Minister Mian Altaf's tenure and much depended on closeness with the personnel staff. And when he demitted office and Secretary Mohammed Afzal was assigned the task of shuffling officers, he forgot this circle of Forest Department for the reasons best known to him.
Agrostology wing was created by forest department to provide free green grass to villagers in all the districts of the Valley. The other motives of the wing are to relive grazing pressure on forests and to provide pastures for nomads' en-route migration. |
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