Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Telangana state NFPE affiliated Unions General Body meeting held at CPMG Office permisees hyderabad on 22/03/2017
In the same meeting a Grand felicitation has been given to com K Ramachandran circle coordination committee of telangana circle who retired on 31-03-2017.
com M Krishnan confederation secretary general has attended and addressed the gathering.
From Gudur Division Com K Sudhakar and com
Sk Nazeemuddin attended
Saturday, April 22, 2017
AIPCPCCWF(Casul and Contingent employees Union)central working committee meeting is being held at hyderabad to
Com MKrishnanALL India president & Secretarygeneral,Confideration inagurated the meeting.Com K Ramachandram,Chairman,Circle coordination committtee NFPE WElcomed the invitees.Com P Suresh GS,R4,ComP Panduranga Rao,G/S AIPEUGDS ,All circle secretaries of NFPE,Telangana attended andaddressed
Friday, April 21, 2017
CASUAL LABOURERS OF DEPARTMENT OF POSTS
CASUAL LABOURERS OF DEPARTMENT OF POSTS - REPLY GIVEN BY DOP TO COM. M. KRISHNAN, PRESIDENT, ALL INDIA POSTAL CASUAL, PART-TIME, CONTINGENT & CONTRACT WORKERS FEDERATION
FOR COPY OF THE REPLY IN DETAIL
SPECIAL LEAVE TO THE FEMALE STAFF CONNECTED TO INQUIRY OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT
No.II/10/Part I
Dated: 17-04-2017
The Secretary (E),
Railway Board
New Delhi
Dear Sir,
Sub: Special leave to the female staff connected to inquiry of sexual harassment – reg.
The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension (DoP&T) vide Gazette notification dated 15-03-2017 No.GSR 251 (E) have issued Rule No.48 ” Special Leave connected to inquiry of sexual harassment” – an amendment to Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972 which was circulated vide No.13026/622016-Estt (L) dated 16th March 2017 to all ministries. According to the said notification dated 15th March 2017, leave upto a period of 90 days may be granted to an aggrieved female Government Employee on the recommendation of the Internal committee or the Local committee as the case may be, during the pendency of inquiry under the Sexual Harassment of Women at work place (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the leave so granted shall not be debited against the leave account.
NFIR requests the Railway Board to issue corresponding instructions early duly endorsing copy to the Federation. copy of DoP&T notification dated 15th March, 2017 is enclosed.
DA/As above
Yours faithfully.
(Dr.M.Raghavaiah)
General secretary
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Request for immediately taking up issue of practical difficulties in receiving fee payments from applicants for selection and engagement in GDS
"rashmin dineshchandra purohit"<rashminpurohit@rediffmail.com> to you & others
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 13:10:58 GMT+0530
To: <aipeugrc@gmail.com>
Cc: <cpmg_guj@indiapost.gov.in>
Bcc: ,
Respected sir,
Namaskar. As provided in Directorate letter No. 17-23/2016-GDS dated 17-03-2017 and relevant guidelines,fee payments from applicants for selection and engagement in GDS has to be received only at Head Post Offices and that too in a Fee Collection Module created for the purpose in online portal only. At the end of day, the counter PA has to enter bulk entry of total fee collected and number of transactions made in ePayment module for the purpose of reconciliation of amount collected and credited.
In practical implementation and execution of the above stated procedure there is unmanageable difficulties to staff and also to applicants who has to come to HO from long distance. The entire process depend on appropriate and uninterrupted net connectivity but there is off and on or low network connectivity which results into difficulties, irritation in queues and avoidable hardships to postal officials and applicants. As there is only one used ID and password, work has to be done on one counter only. There are big queues on counters from yesterday 17th April. As the portal concerned could not be connectible on 17th, the first day, huge number of candidates coming from 100-200 km distance at HOs had to go back and come again. This will be repeated and hardships will continue.
If the fee receiving in ePayments would be allowed at each S.O. it could be quite comfortable to all concerned. Mostly rural people has to travel too much and come in big queue at HO.
This procedure may be reviewed from all angles and aspects with a view to enable unemployed aspirants to deposit their fees at their nearest POs and avoiding hardships at HO also.
I hope, heads of circle would also call for details from HOs and take up issue with Dte . with factual report and valuable suggestions.
It is requested to take up matter with appropriate authority without delay urging immediate review and revision.
With regards
Yours sincerely
Rashmin Purohit
CS AIPE Union Group C
House Rent Allowance (HRA) Claims Under Scrutiny. How To Avoid Rejection
The Mumbai tribunal said in a recent ruling that the assessing officer can now demand further proof for allowing HRA deduction.
Recent rulings from income tax tribunals on house rent allowance or HRA claims have brought the tax rebate to the fore. The Mumbai tribunal in a recent ruling said the assessing officer can now demand further proof for allowing HRA deduction.
“The judgment of Ahmedabad tribunal and recent judgement of Mumbai tribunal are not contradictory per se and have necessarily the similar import. In the ruling of Ahmedabad tribunal, the person was living with his wife and was transferring the rent amount to her bank account. As twin requirements of occupation and actual payment were satisfied, hence it was allowed,” said Sandeep Sehgal, director of tax and regulatory at Ashok Maheshwary & Associates LLP.
“The Mumbai tribunal has only imposed a stringent requirement to produce other necessary documents to prove the genuineness of the claim. Hence, people claiming the HRA exemption for rent paid to relatives are advised to maintain robust documentation to prove the actual payment, actual occupation and genuineness of transaction,” he added.
HRA forms a big component of an employee’s salary. Salaried individuals who live on rent can claim HRA to lower taxes. It is partially exempted from taxes. However, if the individual does not live in a rented accommodation, HRA is fully taxable. Tax experts say that after the tribunals’ rulings, the HRA claims will be under close scrutiny from the tax department.
Now, taxpayers who were claiming HRA exemption on the basis of fake rent receipts may find it difficult to claim the exemption, said Maneet Puri of Taxmann. Experts say that taxpayers, especially who pay rent to relatives, and claim HRA benefits could face higher scrutiny.
The Taxman executive lists out some procedures to follow:
- You should have evidence of your actual stay at residential house of your mother, father, wife etc. (viz. close relative). You can enter into a rent agreement for this purpose.
- It is difficult to substantiate rental payments made in cash. So, it’s better to pay house rent to your close relative through transfer of money in his or her bank account.
- If you are making rental payments which will be taxable in the hands of your close relative, make sure that he or she files income tax return (ITR) and shows such rental receipts in that return of income.
- It may happen that the addresses mentioned in your ration card, bank statement and return of income do not match with the recorded address of your rented premises. In that case, you will be in trouble as now the Income Tax Department may scrutinize such cases.
- You will have to ensure that your rental payments do not exceed the market value of similar property in your vicinity. The income tax officer may disallow HRA exemption in such a case.
- If you are staying in any flat of society of your relative, make sure to intimate the secretary of society about your tenancy.
Monday, April 17, 2017
You’ve got mail, at 14,000 ft: Sikkim man delivers letters between lndia, China
In an age on e-communication, Bhim Bahadur Tamang still makes the once-a-week stop at the Sherathang border post to exchange mail with his Chinese counterpart, an exercise that has persisted through the years.
Postman Bhim Bahadur Tamang at the Sherathang border post. Tamang trudges through snow once a week to deliver mail across the Nathu La pass in Sikkim.(Wang Chen)
Bhim Bahadur Tamang is a diminutive man who has been a postman for more than 25 years, an increasingly thankless job in a world of digital communication.
But for three minutes every Thursday morning, the 61-year-old acts as the bridge between India and China as he trudges through metres of snow at 14,000 feet to deliver mail across the mountainous border pass of Nathu La in Sikkim.
Dressed usually in a windcheater jacket with a cap protecting his ears and head in temperatures that drop to -20 degrees in winter, Tamang crosses the barbed wire fence marking the Indian border at 8:30am, and enters a shed on the Chinese side, not illegally, but with the official sanction of both nations.
As Indian and Chinese troops and their artillery are stationed eyeball-to-eyeball outside, inside the shed mailbags are exchanged between Tamang and his Chinese counterpart without a word being spoken.
“It is a very short process,” Tamang, a postal departmental employee, tells Hindustan Times sitting at the Sherethang border post office ringed by snow-capped mountains on all sides.
“We just exchange bags, sign the mail manifest and leave the shed. There is no conversation whatsoever — I speak Nepali and Hindi, my Chinese friend follows neither.”
An Indo-Chinese agreement in 1992 formally recognised the exchange of mail through the famous Nathu La Pass border post, about 55 km from Sikkim’s capital Gangtok.
The mail exchange is never postponed or stopped, even at the height of tensions between the two Asian neighbours over festering border disputes, says Tamang who took over in 1991 from a predecessor who once carried the mail for Sikkim’s erstwhile monarchs, the Chogyal.
Tough to replace
Nathu La grabbed national headlines after a skirmish between the Indian and Chinese troops during the Chinese aggression on the border state in 1967. Even today, the post is zealously guarded by the army.
Tamang lives in east Sikkim’s Sherathang village, about 7 km from the border. The weather here is fickle, and even in summer a thin film of freezing mist descends across the peaks, making it hard to see anything. Tamang’s village is one of the few that dot the area’s craggy landscape, a terrain so tough that not many people would like to take Tamang’s job.
Every week, Tamang treks the distance to the border and back.For his efforts, Tamang makes just Rs 13,000 a month, another reason why the postal department has struggled to find a successor for the ageing man.
But who does the unique mail exchange benefit? Mostly Tibetan refugees and people in the border villages write to their families across the border, says an official at the army’s 77 Field Post Office at Tadong in Gangtok.
Mails for Tibet are directed to the India Post’s Siliguri office, from where the letters are sent to the army’s 77 Field post office at Tadong, he says.
“The mail, mostly letters are vetted and then sealed in a bag and a manifest issued for the Chinese post office at Yathung in Tibet’s Chumbi Valley is sent to the India Post’s Gangtok head office, from where the sealed bag is collected by the Sherathang postman.”
“While the mail exchange on the Indian side of the border takes place every Sunday, the exchange on the Chinese side takes place every Thursday.”
An army officer says the volume of mail has decreased over the years and at times, only an empty bag is exchanged. “But the process is never stopped,” adds the officer.
In the age of e-mails, had it not been for the mail exchange, letters would take months to reach their destination on both sides, says Laga Tamang, Sherathang post office in-charge who also fills in for Bhim Bahadur when he is indisposed.
“Come hail or snow, Bhim Bahadur trudges up the 7km stretch from the Sherathang to Nathula to exchange the mailbag,” he says.
Meeting of the Standing Committee of National Council (JCM) - reg
MEETING OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE
MEETING NOTICE
F.No.3/3/2016-JCA (Pt)
Government Of India
Ministry of Personnel, PG & Pensions
Department of Personnel & Training
Establishment (JCA-2) Section
F.No.3/3/2016-JCA (Pt)
Government Of India
Ministry of Personnel, PG & Pensions
Department of Personnel & Training
Establishment (JCA-2) Section
North Block, New Delhi
Dated: 11th April, 2017
Dated: 11th April, 2017
OFFICE MEMORANDUM
Subject: Meeting of the Standing Committee of National Council (JCM) - reg
The undersigned is directed to say that the meeting of Standing Committee has been scheduled to be held on 3/5/2017 (Wednesday) under the Chairmanship of Secretary (P) to discuss the agenda item received from Secretary, Staff Side (NC-JCM), at 3.00p.m, in Room No. 119, South Block, New Delhi.
2. Kindly make it convenient to attend the meeting.
All Members of National Council (JCM) for the Standing Committee Members (As per list attached).
Copy for information to:1. Secretary, Staff Side, National Council (JCM), 13- C, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi.
2. General Secretary, AIRF, 4 State Entry Road, New Delhi
3. General Secretary, NFIR, 3 Chelmsford Road, New Delhi
Proposed Changes to RTI Act Will Complicate Seeking Information from Government
The proposed amendments not only make approaching the information commission more cumbersome and legalistic but also defy the diktat of the Supreme Court.
The RTI Act has undoubtedly been one of the most empowering legislations for Indians. According to estimates, four to six million information applications are filed every year, making the Indian RTI Act the world’s most extensively used transparency legislation. National assessments have shown that a large number of RTI applications emanate from the urban poor and from rural households seeking information about their basic entitlements.
It is, therefore, imperative that the profile of RTI users be borne in mind while framing RTI rules. The amendments to the Act being proposed by the central government, unfortunately, could result in making it more difficult for common people to access their rights under the RTI Act, especially their right to approach the Central Information Commission (CIC) in cases concerning violations of the law.
The proposed amendments make the process of filing an appeal or complaint to the information commission more cumbersome and legalistic. Rules promulgated in 2012 already required, among other things, appellants to include an index of the documents referred to in the appeal and to ‘duly authenticate and verify’ all the accompanying enclosures. Instead of simplifying the requirements to make the process more people friendly, the proposed rules have placed an additional burden on citizens to provide a certificate stating that the matter under appeal or complaint has not been previously filed and disposed, and is not pending with the commission or any court.
The requirements in the proposed rules for filing complaints to the CIC also go beyond the law and fall foul of the diktat of the Supreme Court. In 2012, the Supreme Court in its judgement in Union of India Vs S. Srinivasan (Civil Appeal No. 3185 of 2005) cited various earlier orders in support of the principle that “a rule must be in accord with the parent statute as it cannot travel beyond it”. The proposed rules state that each complaint must be accompanied with a copy of the RTI application submitted to the public information officer (PIO). The RTI Act provides for filing a complaint to the information commission in cases where a PIO has not been appointed or where a PIO has refused to accept an RTI application, among others. In such matters, the complainant would not have a copy of the RTI application submitted to the PIO. Yet the proposed rules make attaching a copy of the RTI application a mandatory requirement for filing a complaint.
Further, the proposed amendments, without any legal basis, require that a complaint should be filed within 90 days from the date the cause of complaint arose, failing which a request for condoning the delay is required. Under the RTI Act, while the procedure of appealing to the commission is time-bound, there is no timeframe within which a complaint has to be filed. The complaint is envisaged as a mechanism to bring to the notice of the commission violations of the RTI Act and invoke, among other things, the imposition of penalties under the Act. Since violations of the RTI Act, such as being provided false information, may only be proved much after the information has been furnished, the Act has not prescribed a time-frame for filing complaints. Similarly, the only way to highlight cases of non-compliance with the provisions of proactive disclosure under section 4 of the Act is by filing a complaint to the information commission. National assessments have shown that this critical section of the law is perhaps the most poorly implemented – nearly 70% of RTI applications filed in India seek information that should have been proactively provided. If the proposed rules are promulgated, citizens will be unable to approach the commission in a complaint, for neither is an RTI application required to be filed for section 4 disclosures nor is it possible to provide evidence of meeting the requirement of the proposed 90 day time-frame.
While the attempt by the government to define a process of looking into cases of non-compliance with the CIC’s orders is welcome, it appears to be hastily drafted. For instance, while the proposed rules state that a non-compliance complaint is to be filed within three months from the date of non-compliance, they do not specify whether such a complaint will be heard after all the pending appeals and complaints or if it will be treated as a continuing matter of the original appeal/complaint and hence be treated as a separate category to be taken up on a priority basis. Given that it takes a long time, often years, for appeals and complaints to come up for hearing in commissions, if a complaint regarding non-compliance is listed at the end of the queue, the matter will be rendered meaningless for the complainant.
Perhaps the most concerning provisions of the rules is the proposal to allow for the withdrawal of appeals based on a written communication by the appellant and closure of proceedings upon death of the appellant. There is no provision in the RTI Act which permits, or even leaves open, the possibility of appellants withdrawing their appeals and therefore, again the rules appear to go beyond the law. More importantly, given the Indian reality where RTI applicants continue to be threatened and brow beaten, occasionally physically beaten up, and even killed, such provisions will provide a perverse incentive to vested interests to silence the information seeker through coercion or physical harm. This controversial proposal is especially concerning given that the central government has failed to implement the Whistle Blowers Protection Act which was passed by parliament more than three years ago.
The government has provided a window for people to send their comments on the proposed rules. This provides an opportunity to address the problematic provisions and to even formulate rules that would further the transparency regime in the country. For instance, while the Act empowers people to access information about a private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law, there are no rules to specify how this clause can be operationalised. This has resulted in the provision remaining largely unused despite its potentially transformative implications. Similarly, the central government could use this opportunity to define the accountability framework for implementation of section 4 disclosures, by fixing responsibility for compliance on specific officials in public authorities and linking it with the performance appraisal of such individuals.
Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri are RTI activists and associated with Satark Nagrik Sangathan and the National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information.
Finance Ministry okays 8.65 per cent interest on EPF
The Finance Ministry is believed to have permitted the Labour Ministry to go ahead with 8.65 per cent rate of interest on employees' provident fund for 2016-17, which will benefit over four crore EPFO members.
The Finance Ministry in its communication to the Labour Ministry has, however, put a rider that the interest rate should not result in a deficit for the retirement fund. This will enable the Labour Ministry to provide 8.65 per cent rate as decided by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) trustees.
According to EPFO estimates, the fund will see a surplus after providing 8.65 per cent interest rate for the last fiscal.
A reluctant Finance Ministry had been nudging the Labour Ministry to lower the EPF rate to below 8.65 per cent as approved by the EPFO trustees in December last year.
"The Finance Ministry in its recommendation to the Labour Ministry said it is up to the latter to decide on what interest rate should be given. However, it should be ensured that there should not be any deficit to the fund," according to a source.
"The Finance Ministry had earlier suggested an EPF rate slightly lower than approved by the trustees as it wanted the interest to be aligned with the rates of small savings," added the source.
Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya has been maintaining that the EPFO subscribers would be provided 8.65 per cent rate of interest for 2016-17.
"The Central Board of Trustees (CBT) had decided to give 8.65 per cent. Our ministry keeps on discussing with the Finance Ministry. We would have surplus of Rs 158 crore on providing 8.65 per cent," Dattatreya had said earlier last week when asked whether the Finance Ministry is making a case for lowering the interest rate.
"If need be, I will talk to them (the Finance Ministry). I have requested them to approve 8.65 per cent. In any case this amount (interest income) will be given to workers," the minister had said.
As per the practice, the board's decision is concurred by the Finance Ministry after evaluating whether the EPFO would be able to provide the rate approved by trustees through its own income or not.
Once the Finance Ministry ratifies the rate of interest approved by the CBT, it is credited into the account of EPFO members for that particular financial year.
The Finance Ministry had last year also decided to lower the EPF interest rate of 8.8 per cent for 2015-16, decided by the CBT, to 8.7 per cent. The decision had drawn flak from all quarters forcing the government to uphold 8.8 per cent.
The Finance Ministry has been asking the Labour Ministry to rationalise the EPF interest rate in view of lowering of returns on various administered saving schemes like PPF.
The government generally ratifies the rate of return approved by the CBT because the EPFO is an autonomous body and provides interest on EPF deposits from its own income.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)