Srinagar, September 19: The government of Jammu and Kashmir has created an online portal for Regular Departmental Action (RDA) cases brought against public employees, to streamline the process for carrying out departmental proceedings, and to track progress in order to enforce adherence to the set timelines.
The General Administration Department’s general real-time monitoring of the cases is stated in a circular they issued: The portal shall contain electronic data related to RDA cases in digitised format with a unique ID which shall be accessible to all the concerned departments/disciplinary authorities.
Additionally, the website https://rdajk.govin offers a window for the Anti-Corruption Bureau to send instances to the General Administration Department for onward reference to the relevant Departments.
Additionally, it offers a gateway for posting RDA cases that the Departments themselves have started. When it comes to RDA cases, the site will serve as a communication tool between the GAD and the Departments as well as between the GAD and ACB.
Notably, the government has periodically released thorough instructions for the establishment of Regular Departmental Action and deadlines, with the most recent in this series being Circular No. 24-JK(GAD) of 2021 published on July 17, 2021.
But according to the government, it has been seen that Departments are not adhering to the rules and deadlines, which has caused a significant delay in the resolution of the cases.
According to the document, departmental proceedings that are delayed in their conclusion give the accused official an unfair advantage or subject them to harassment. On the one hand, these delays aid the guilty official(s) in avoiding punishment, while unjustified delays lengthen the suffering of the official(s), who may ultimately be cleared of all charges.
In light of the circular, the General Administration Department (GAD) has instructed departments to designate a Nodal Officer, not below the rank of Deputy Secretary, who will be in charge of uploading cases and their progress at various stages of proceedings, routinely monitoring the cases, liaising with the General Administration Department, in addition to other issues relating to RDAs.
Two login IDs for each Department are required; one is for the Disciplinary Authority and the other is for the Nodal Officer. It states that the Department’s Disciplinary Authority shall have access to track the cases in real time.
“The legacy data of all RDA cases received from Investigating Agencies/GAD as well as the cases initiated by the Departments on their own, which are pending with the departments as of date, shall be uploaded on the portal within a timeframe of one month positively, from the date of issuance of this Circular,” the circular continued.
