FLASH NEWS

The bench of Honourable High Court of Calcutta that heard WPCT No. 261/2008 earlier would sit tomorrow, the 9th of July, at 2 PM and this case is listed as item no. 11.

UPDATE

A meeting of the President, Secretary General, Assistant Secretary General, and Liaison Secretary was held on 02.07.2010 at Chennai. The Working President couldn’t attend due to domestic pressures. Vice President (SZ), Joint Secretary (SZ) and President, Chennai attended the meeting.

The meeting reviewed the status of various issues and deliberated on the action to be taken.

The meeting discussed the difficulty caused to the members at large due to the stay on promotions to the cadre of Superintendent of Central Excise and to that of Assistant Commissioner in terms of the order of the Honourable High Court of Calcutta. The stay order was issued in the month of March and every one expected that the stay would be vacated well in time to issue the promotion orders after the calendar DPC. But the delay occurred in collecting and collating data for finalizing the counter affidavit of the department delayed the matter. Subsequent to the filing of the Counter Affidavit, the petitioners were granted time to file their rejoinder. There is yet another reason that is delaying the matter further – the non constitution of division bench in the Honourable Court. It is expected that all processes would be completed and the case would be listed shortly.

Yet, there could be two contingencies which may require action on our part. One is that the case is not being listed even after the constitution of the Division Bench and the other is the non vacation of the stay order after hearing. We are of the view that in such a scenario, the Association or some affected individual, next in line for promotion, would have to implead in the case for a limited purpose of modifying the order so as to permit the Department to issue promotion orders on an ad hoc basis, subject to the final out come of the petition. In this regard we make it crystal clear that the association is in no way contesting or defending the relief prayed for by the petitioners before the Court, rather we are of the firm belief that whatever is provided by the Constitution of India and other laws for the up-liftment of our unfortunate brethren should be extended to them in letter and spirit. At the same time the association also has to strike a balance vis-à-vis the interests of the members at large, some of them who has not been benefited by ACP/MACP may retire in this month or next, loosing their promotion between the cup and the lip, there by loosing on their pension for the rest of their life. In these circumstances, it was decided that we would implead in the case in the event the petition is not getting listed even after a week from the constitution of the Division Bench or if the stay order is not modified even after hearing.

The meeting considered the apprehension expressed by various corners regarding the ongoing restructuring exercise and the opinions that the restructuring should be rejected in toto. It was decided that the Association should not be party to any move to derail the process. Our role now would be to ensure that the commitments given by the authorities in our discussion with them are not diluted in any stage before the implementation. Simultaneously, we should avail all opportunities to bargain for more and to get the ratio between excise & customs revised.

The meeting placed on record their appreciation to Com. Sanjay Srinivasan, Secretary, AICEIA Pune Circle for having obtained valuable information on grant of notional fixation of pay to other ministries which is relevant to our case. The issue would be addressed afresh utilizing these inputs.

Before signing off, I wish to express my strong reservations on some of the comments placed in the blog. The facility to place comments was given as a measure to receive constructive criticism, opinions, feed back from members and also as an indicator of the highest democratic values cherished by this organization. Most of the other service organizations do not offer this facility. We know very well that many of the comments are from non members – not only of the association, but also of the cadre. But we have always felt that the person penning the comment have some interest in this cadre. Of late, some of the comments are on the borderline of vulgarity, which place the entire cadre in bad light. This site is viewed by large number of non-members. Don’t be under the impression that the leadership of the association would be annoyed and demoralized with such comments. We have sufficient resilience to see through these comments. If you want the satisfaction of using foul language, please do that by emails to our mail IDs and spare the exhibition of filth in public. I request everyone to maintain decorum and dignity while commenting on the blog; lest, we would be constrained to disband the facility.

ARUN ZACHARIAH.P

PRESIDENT, AICEIA.

Inclusion of Delhi Circle

CEC meeting at Indore, Madhya Pradesh

Ref. No. AICEIA/org/2009/101-134c
Date : 28.06.10.

Notice for Central Executive Committee (CEC) meeting
At Indore, Madhya Pradesh on 31st July and 1st of August, 2010.

Notice is hereby issued for the meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the All India Central Excise Inspectors’ Association. The meeting is scheduled to be held on 31st of July and 1st of August, 2010 at Indore, M.P.

The meeting is scheduled to commence at 10.00 A.M. Sharp on 31st July, 2010 and to be concluded by 1st August, 2010 at 1.00P.M.

Agenda
A. INAUGURAL SESSION:
B. CLOSED SESSION:

Reading and confirmation of the minutes of the last CEC meeting held at Rajasthan on 23rd and 24th of January,2010.
Tabling of Action Taken Report on restructuring and on various other issues.
Discussion
Agitational programme on the pending issues.
Fixing of date and venue of the next convention of the A.I.C.E.I.A.
Any other items with the permission of the chair.

Note:
1. Each Branch/circle are hereby requested to submit their suggestion on the forthcoming action plan and details of accounts of each branch/circle may kindly be sent to the SG / President by e.mail before 20.07.10 in order to enable incorporation of the same in the action taken report to be presented by the S.G.
2. Venue for All India CEC Meeting will be as under:
SANGAM PALACE Near Rajiv Gandhi Statue Circle, Choitram Hospital Chouraha Circle, A B Road,INDORE (M.P.)
3. Confirmation of attendance along with details of the to and fro journey may be made to, H.K.Ghoshal (Jt. Secy AICEIA ) 09827177899, Ajit Kumar K.G.(Circle Secretary M.P. & Chattishgarh) 09826193027, Amithabh Vijayvargiya, President 094254-28000.
(For confirmation of arrival & Accomodation)
1Vinod Sharma, Vice-President 098263-70922 email vin_sha@rediffmail.com
2. Sandip Panwalkar, Ex-member 098264-54790
3.. Suresh Nair, J S 098260-36780

(Kousik Roy)
Secretary General
To
President of AICEIA
All members of Central Executive Committee of AICEIA.
All Branch/Circle Secretary and president.

GOOD MORNING

Dear Friends,
We were on a short trip to Delhi from 20th to 24th instant to pursue the restructuring work , that is likely to be finalised byHRM within a couple of weeks; in addition to that we got an appointment, of the Secretary General of Suerintendents Association on 21st of this month.
As everybody anxious about the Kolkata High Court Case, we applogise for not updating the blog for quite some time, on 17th of June Department submitted its affidavit to court and the appellant was initially given one week time for their rejoinder to file, the appellant again asked for an extension of time; right after the submission of the rejoinder department will get another oppurtunity to submit addtional arguement if any.
Some members/non-members/circle Secretaries suspected about the activity of the Association; in fact for submission of Affidavit govt took three months while court has given three weeks time initially. It is true the situation is unbearable for the All India Association and certainly when association actively trying to expedite the case, it can not be said that the case has no merit and it is also true that for this reason entire cadre should not suffer. Only to pursue submission of affidavit association spent at least twenty days in different formation of CBEC .
We know that most of our members learned gentlemen, though we have only 6000(app.) mebership of which we are getting subscription of only 4500 members. Some of the units failed to understand the necessity of sending of subscription regularly. In fact it is not possible to give every detail in the blog, as of now AICEIA is the most dynamic Associationunder CBEC.
In delhi on 21st instant we requested Secretary General of Superintendent Association and Secretary General of Ministerial Association in seperate meetings to form a Departmental JCA as it exists in CBDT. Though Ministerial Association was positive we have not yet got any positive response from the Superintendent Association. For revised pay scale from 01.01.1996/1986 and the discrimination of superintendents in the restructuring we requested superintendent Association to plan for agitational programme, it is transpired by one of the leaders of superintendent Association from pune that for both the issues can be tkaen up in Supreme Court, Our Association's view was that we have got hundreads of favourable judgement in our favour over the years but failed to implement most of them beacause of our weekness of organising organisational action programme. However it appeared to us that our senior brother's leadership are not keen to take any action programme, and moreover they want programme if any that should be on Saturdays and Sundays.
However, we would like to request our members/nonmembers keep sending your advice and take part in active discussion with the superintendent Association for achieving our goal.
Thanking you
AICEIA

Kolkata High Court case on promotion .... update

Chief Commissioner Kokata, along with Commissioner Kolkata-I Commissionerate and his team of officers is all set to appear for the case in question, it appears that the case may come up for hearing on 21st instant, affidavit submitted to KOlkata High Court, affirmation already submitted by Commissioner Kolkata-I, we are of the view that there could be a modification in the injunction order and court may allow promotion till the final outcome of the case.

We are not updating our blog regularly as we are yet to achieve new goal, Association is pursuing each and every single case like 1) Notional fixation from 01.01.1996 without arrears ( we have no objection in the other guy's demand of 01.01.1986 if it is achievable), 2) Removal of stagnation, 3) additional increment for all who ever have joined before 01.07. 2006, 3) removal of Rs. 5400/- grade pay in two different pay bands, 4) rectification of anomaly caused by MACP, 5) rummaging allowance, 6) daily allowance to all inspectors and many other issues but amongst them the first four issues are prime by merit.

For the first point we are struggling to achieve it from long back , in the past two years we met several ministers inclusive of finance minister on this issue, which have yielded no result that is well known to you.

Recently we met MOS Revenue and Superintendent Association met several ministers and secretaries on this issue. Recently we tried to contact Superintendent Association in Delhi and requested to organise a joint meeting along with Income-Tax and Customs organisations, we assured that our association is regularly contacting with other associations in CBEC inclusive of the Association of Narcotics, so, if The All India Association of superintendents of Central Excise is ready to convene a meeting we will be able to bring all the other Associations of Revenue Department so that a joint action programme could be chalked out, we are still awaiting a positive reply from the superintendent Association who are very busy in pursuing this issue in front of different VVIPs. Persuation without any action may not and can not yield any result.

For the Second point it is gathered that the proposal for creation of no. of class-I officers is nearly halved by our Board, we shall try to confirm it in our next visit to HRM, here also our association feels that action is very much necessary, we know that our leadership is not always ready to take up action on the plea that members are not willing!!!! But our experience says that it is our office bearers who are the key people to convince our members about the seriousness of the issue. Finally any action without the active participation of the Superintendent Association may not be successful.