View/comments on new Customs Policy

Views / comments received from members of the Associations :

Analysis of the Policy :

Finally, much ‘unwanted’ the Customs Transfer / Placement / Deputation Policy has been issued by the CCO, Ahmedabad. It is a requiem for the deputation policy hitherto going at Kachchh Customs Commissionerate Kandla / Custom House Kandla posting for past more than two decade. Now onwards there will be common pool of officers for postings at the entire Customs Zone, including Kandla.

Coming to the nitty-gritty of the Policy, as per the last condition of the para no. 3, the officers are liable to be transferred and posted to any place in the jurisdiction of Gujarat Customs Zone. (emphasis supplied to “any place in the jurisdiction of Gujarat Customs Zone”).

It appears that the said condition is unlikely to go down well amongst the officers and unlikely to be accepted in the present form. Though it is being heard from the administration that preference would be called for from the officers and they would be placed accordingly to their preference or to the station nearer to their parent commissionerate, as far as possible, excepting in the case where the officer is posted at CH, Kandla. Minimum that should be done to make the policy acceptable is to remove the condition of being posted anywhere in Gujarat Customs Zone and add a condition that the officer would be posted nearer to his concurrent parent Central Excise jurisdiction. Whether the management accept it or not, the officer in the vicinity of 40 and above, would not be in position to move his domicile very easily and frequently.

Similarly, the para 4 of the Policy pertaining to criteria for posting in Customs Zone is also required to placed under scanner. Here the condition (ii) reads as under ;

“(ii) Once an officer is assigned a customs tenure, he shall not be considered for Central Excise before completion of the tenure. Similarly, once already moved out for Central Excise outstation tenure, he shall not be picked up for Customs outstation tenure.”

Under the first part of the condition, the boundary between Customs and Central Excise has been made non-porous. The officer once posted to customs will have to complete Customs tenure, come what may. This water-tight compartment would not be palatable to officers.

Second part of the clause is very confusing. It states that once already moved out for Central Excise outstation tenure, he shall not be picked up for Customs outstation tenure. The clause needs to be explained with example, for each sector. Further, it needs elaboration as to what is Central Excise outstation tenure and what is Customs outstation tenure means. And still further what the administration mean by the term, Outstation.

Third condition, of the para 4 of the Policy is further more difficult to understand and even more complex to implement. It reads as under :

“(iii) Between two outstation postings, either in Central Excise or Customs, there should be a gap of 8 years i.e. on completion of an outstation Central Excise tenure, the officer will not be posted in any outstation in Customs.”

Without the definition of outstation postings it is difficult to exactly gauge the implication of the above condition. Further if the HQ and division postings are considered as ‘station’ posting and rest as ‘outstation’ postings, which appears to be decipherable meaning of the said term, there would be hardly any officers from Rajkot sector who would have not moved out to ‘outstation’ in previous 8 years.

Would it mean that no officer from Rajkot sector be ‘touched’ !!!

Para 5 of the Policy pertaining to posting of officers to Customs commissionnerate is also not free from confusion. Until the officer is posted to specific commissionerate there would be uncertainty as to where he would land up. Past experience has revealed that the system of ‘preferences’ called for by the administration is rarely being followed in letter and spirit. In fact the officers, sensing design of the administration, has started playing gambit by declaring the least preferred station as “preferences”, as the preferred station are invariably ruled out. So, if the officers is not placed at his preferred station the administration should declare the reason for such action.

Para 5(ii)(b) of the policy pertaining to Lady officers reads as under :

“(b) Lady officers whose name feature in the list would be allowed to exercise an option of not taking up a customs tenure outstation.”

Again this clause has been drafted probably keeping in mind the officers of Ahd/Vadodara sector. For Rajkot sector, there is no Customs postings in or around Rajkot city upto 100 kms. Whether Jamnagar HQ would be considered as Outstation posting or not, needs clarification.

Para 6 of the Policy states that all annual transfer / placement orders should be issued by 15th May and join new place of posting by 31st May. This condition the Policy straightaway stands violated as we are in midst of June and still no orders of transfer or placement are issued. In any case, this dead line for issuance of annual transfer needs to be brought ahead to 15th April and 30th April.

Above are the major points of concern so far as Rajkot sector is concerned. There might be issues which need to be addressed for other sector/s too. Therefore, more rounds of negotiation will ensue to tweak it to minimum acceptable form. No one would deny that more time would be required for this excercise. Anymore time in issuing Annual transfer order would mean the end annual transfer exercise itself. As clamour has already started on the count that the academic year has started and officers are no longer in mood or position to move out of their present station.

The need of the hour is, accordingly, to put entire Customs policy to the backburner too, like Central Excise policy for the current year. This would also clear any uncertainties that the association, and to some extent the administration, is presuming that it might throw up on introduction of GST and or Cadre restructuring.

Let the Kandla solution be found in isolation.