State lifts freeze on recruitments

Priority to filling vacancies from the surplus cadres cell

Maharashtra has lifted the ban on recruitments for state government jobs.

According to an official, a government resolution issued on Friday has lifted the freeze on recruitment and directed the filling up of vacancies in the state administration.

"The first priority would be to fill vacancies from the surplus cadres cell that was created to rationalise the government workforce. Following this, those persons who need to be accommodated in a state government job on compassionate grounds would be considered. The third category would be all those part-time government employees since they are project-affected persons on account of development projects in the state."

The order lists those registered with the employment exchanges followed by open category recruitments for filling up state government vacancies.

The state government had imposed a ban on filling of vacancies arising out of retirements.

The move was aimed at bringing in fiscal prudence in the state government spending when its annual expenditure had ballooned to over 60 per cent of its total budgeted expenditure.

The state had also stopped disbursing bonuses to its employees for two years, which brought down the administrative expenditure down to 47 per cent of the total annual expenditure.

"In an election year, especially with budgetary sops being doled out by the Union government, the state perhaps feels the need to offer sops of its own, especially to the government employees who have been at the receiving end of the fiscal prudence measures for three of the four years the Democratic Front government has ruled Maharashtra," the official said.