Editorial – Jan 2023

Communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has struck with the perform or perish mantra in DoT and ten senior officers have been sent packing with forced retirement. Of the ten so retired half of them belonged to the SC and OBC communities and for some there were also corruption related occurrences. All those retired prematurely belonged to the Indian Telecom Service (ITS) cadre. This is the first time that such pruning has come into play in DoT. More officers are also under scanner on similar grounds. The minister has made clear on numerous occassions government’s zero tolerance for corruption policy and also underscored the fact that slackers will be taken to task, performance would be evaluated, continuation is not assured, simply because it is government service.

The apex court in its judgements has held that compulsory retirement is not a punishment or stigma and the demand for application of natural justice principles are not called for unless such decisions are arbitrary or malafide.

The railway ministry has also been in for some manpower shaving under Mr Vaishnaw. So far one person per three days has gone and in the past 16 months, this tally stands at 139.

Meanwhile, it’s budget season. The Telecom and IT industry has submitted its wish list and set of demands to the union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. Revenue reductions and duty cuts have been asked for. Notable among this is the reduction of license fee to 1 per cent to cover only administrative costs. Waiver from USO contribution of 5 per cent of AGR has been asked for till the USOF corpus is not fully utilised. Specific particular demands have been raised related to direct taxes by the telecom industry which wants carry forward of business lossess and set off to be increased in duration by double from 8 to 16 years. This it wants to avoid stress from tax flows during recovery phase since it already has payouts on account of spectrum and AGR. There are also demands related to indirect taxes, GST notifications.