New Delhi: In a 180-degree turn on its contentious 360-degree appraisal system of senior civil servants of the level of joint secretary and above, the Narendra Modi government has informed the Central Administrative Tribunal’s (CAT) Nainital’s circuit bench that “no such system is there in the Government of India”.
The central government’s stand before the CAT circuit bench in a written affidavit on 9 October is a complete volte-face on the evaluation process that it started in 2015 for appraisal of officers from the All India Services and other Central Government Group A services for empanelling them to the post of joint secretary, additional secretary and secretary. ThePrint has a copy of the affidavit.
Empanelment is the process of selecting officers for their placement at the top management level of the Government of India. The appointment of an officer of the rank of joint secretary is a two-step process involving empanelment and selection by the experts’ panel.
Significantly, it’s the central government that empanels All India Services officers at and above the level of joint secretary.
In a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on 6 February, 2020, Minister of State for PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Jitendra Singh had informed the House about the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government’s 360-degree appraisal system.
This came nearly three years after the Union government’s Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions informed a parliamentary panel that the system was necessitated because its previous process did not fully capture the qualities of officers in terms of integrity and capability. These views were expressed after the Delhi High Court in February 2017 upheld the new evaluation system.
The DoPT’s affidavit on 9 October was in response to a petition filed by Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi of the Uttarakhand cadre, who said he had been informed in November last year that he was not being empanelled as joint secretary at the Union level.
Chaturvedi then moved the CAT and sought all documents that formed the basis of his rejection including the 360-degree appraisal process, the recommendation of the Civil Services Board, and the opinion of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. He also sought a copy of the rules of the appraisal system.
ThePrint has reached out to the DoPT spokesperson for a comment on the central government’s turnaround before CAT’s Nainital circuit bench. This report will be updated once DoPT responds.
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What is the 360-degree appraisal system?
Also called the ‘multi-source feedback’, the 360-degree appraisal system evaluates an officer by obtaining feedback from people around them — peers, subordinates, and customers (both internal and external) — in addition to self-appraisal, and that of a superior officer.
But Chaturvedi isn’t the first person to challenge the system, with serving civil servants having reportedly questioned the opaqueness of the process.
The central government’s latest response on the 360-degree appraisal system in Chaturvedi’s case stands in complete contrast with Union Minister Jitendra Singh’s response in Rajya Sabha in February 2020.
“A system of 360-degree appraisal involving Multi-Source Feedback from various stakeholders including from seniors, peers, and juniors, etc. has been introduced in the process of empanelment process takes into account the overall service record, vigilance status and suitability of the officers concerned,” Singh had said in the written reply.
This came three years after the DoPT justified the need for such a system.
In August 2017, the DoPT had in a written submission informed a parliamentary panel about the need to factor in the 360-degree review of the officers for empanelment purposes. The submission forms part of the parliamentary panel report on ‘Appraisal and Empanelment of Civil Servants under the central government’.
“….The earlier system of empanelment did not fully capture the qualities of officers in terms of integrity and capability and there was a felt need to improve the mechanism. It was in this background that the revised guidelines for empanelment were put in place in April 2016. The guidelines, inter-alia, provide for (the) collection of Multi-Source Feedback from a minimum of 5 stakeholders such as seniors, juniors, peers, external stakeholders, and serving secretaries. This is known as the 360-degree review and is the same as MSF,” the DoPT said in response to a query by the parliamentary panel.
The DoPT further said that the expert panel takes feedback on seven attributes, which include decision-making, ownership, pro-activeness, delivery, leadership, honesty, and suitability for higher positions.
“Based on this and the assessment of Annual Confidential Report/ annual Performance Appraisal Reports, the expert panel gives its recommendations. Thus, the assessment of the officer is made not just on his record, but also on the above qualities and his/her general reputation. The new system has been widely recognized as an improvement over the earlier system,” the submission says.
The 92nd report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievance, Law headed by senior Congress leader Anand Sharma in 2017, however, noted that it finds the present 360-degree appraisal system “opaque, non-transparent and subjective”.
The panel recommended that the entire process should be transparent and rule-based. “The government should frame guidelines on the entire aspects of the process of 360-degree appraisal and it should be notified,” the panel said in the report.
In mid-2018, a Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS officer Vineet Chawdhry was denied promotion to secretary after the system found him unfit for the top job. He challenged the order before the CAT, which directed the Modi government to review the decision. The central government, however, stood its ground, insisting that the review process was fair.
In March 2020, a division bench of Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Talwant Singh upheld the evaluation system after a senior IAS officer moved the Delhi High Court challenging the 360 degree appraisal system after he was overlooked for empanelment thrice.
A serving bureaucrat who didn’t want to be named said that the 360-degree appraisal system is an extremely subjective assessment that can be used by disgruntled juniors to scuttle an officer’s promotion.
How senior civil servants are appointed
In the present system of empanelment, an expert panel comprising retired secretaries to the government of India, first goes through the Performance Appraisal Reports of the shortlisted batches/officers and they moderate the gradings. Under the 360-degree appraisal system, the expert panel also talks to people under whom the officer has worked, including subordinates, peers, or even stakeholders who may have a say.
For any officer, the expert panel talks to a minimum of five persons and looks into five or six parameters — integrity, behavioural competencies, functional skills, domain expertise, delivery, and potential. Based on the feedback given by the five persons, the panel gives its recommendation.
The Civil Services Board headed by the cabinet secretary processes these recommendations and sends them to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) for a final decision.
For the empanelment of an additional secretary or secretary, the recommendations are further processed by another Special Committee of secretaries, which is also headed by the cabinet secretary. After processing, it is sent to the ACC for final approval.
This is an updated version of this report.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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