Gurugram: Haryana ministers want the power to transfer government employees for which they have raised this demand with Chief Minister Nayab Saini on more than one occasion, the last being Wednesday.

The Print has learned that the ministers have requested that they should at least be given the authority to transfer Group C and D staff if not the gazetted officers who come under Group A and B. 

Currently, all transfers are handled by the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), wherein a dedicated Haryana Civil Services (HCS) officer serves as the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for this purpose.

On Monday, the Haryana CM ruled out the possibility of giving such power to the ministers while responding to a media query.

“All transfers in Haryana are done through online portals. Whom will we give the power? As the transfers are online, the employees have to apply accordingly. If any employee has a grievance, we have committees under deputy commissioners at the district-level to submit an application for its redressal,” Saini told the media outside Nada Sahib Gurdwara in Panchkula on the occasion of Guru Gobind Singh’s birth anniversary.

Currently, there are 11 Cabinet Ministers and 2 Ministers of State in Haryana. Besides the routine cabinet meetings, the chief minister meets the ministers every week in an informal meeting which is normally held on every Wednesday, a practice started by Manohar Lal Khattar and is being continued by Saini.

A minister told The Print that though the matter was discussed in the past too, the demand was seriously raised with Saini during the past week. They requested that they be granted authority to transfer Group B and C employees, the minister added.

One of the ministers is said to have told Saini that several government officials in his constituency openly worked against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and supported the Congress during the assembly polls held in September. They were still working at the place of their choice and he couldn’t even transfer them, according to this minister.

Earlier, the Haryana government had a one-month window when the ministers were authorised to issue transfer orders in their departments without any interference from the CMO.

This system prevailed during the initial years of Khattar’s second term as the chief minister in 2019. Back then, Khattar had allowed ministers to exercise transfer power till December second week. 

But, the arrangement was retracted completely from 2020 to 2024. At the end of the second term, Saini became the chief minister in March, and the old system of centralised transfers and postings remained in place.

Sampat Singh, a former Haryana minister in the governments headed by Devi Lal and Om Prakash Chautala, told The Print that earlier ministers were granted transfer and posting powers for a month or two in a year.

During the rest of the year, Singh said, the mandate rested with the chief minister.

“When Master Hukam Singh became the CM in 1990, he gave the authority to the ministers on their request. However, within a month, he had to withdraw those powers as the ministers started engaging in large-scale transfers of employees,” he added.

Singh questioned what prompted the ministers to put in such a request when the BJP government claimed that it had introduced transparency in transfers by going online.

“What will happen to the BJP’s claims of transparency when every minister starts issuing transfer orders?” he asked.

Power, according to another former minister Ashok Arora, was completely centralised under the BJP government.

The Congress legislator from Thanesar sympathised with the ministers, saying that when they were not even in a position to transfer a peon of their department, it was clear that their “value was limited to just a car bearing a flag and a ‘kothi’ (mansion) in Chandigarh”. 

(Edited by Tony Rai)

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