NEW DELHI: The Centre has decided to replace the existing system of writing Annual Confidential Reports of civil servants, with Performance Appraisal Reports for more objective evaluation of their work as recommended by the Hota Committee on Civil Service Reforms.

The second Administrative

These include implementing reservation only at the entry level in civil services, linking officers' continuation or removal from their jobs to performance and specifying a fixed tenure of DMs and SPs.

Although the Moily Commission is some distance away from submitting its report, the government has taken the views of the Hota Committee on appraisals.

"Performance appraisal will also be utilised as a mechanism for career development and form a basis for promotions, empanelment and postings," minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions Suresh Pachouri told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

Pachouri said: "It has also been decided that mandatory mid-career training for IAS officers will be introduced for upgradation of their skills and improving the quality of governance."

As explained by an official later, the new system of PARs will be more effective in judging the efficiency of the civil servants as it has been devised to make an objective assessment of the officer's performance in the assignment.

He said: "Since the existing system of ACRs is not based on monitorable inputs, it doesn't work effectively. Besides, under the system, adverse remarks are rarely given due to the hassles of having to defend such remarks subsequently".

Speaking about the work of the second Administrative Reforms Commission, its chairman Moily, meanwhile, said: "We have been toying with several ideas. One of them could be keeping the reservation formula only upto the entry level.

After that, the merit of the candidate will decide his or her fate. We want the best of the brains to remain." While speaking about efficiency, Moily cited the example of China where thousands of civil servants were sacked to ensure the efficency levels were met in the bureaucratic set-up.

"No one should take entry into civil services as a permanent guarantee. Perform or you are sacked should be the mantra," he said but added "this is right now in initial stage and nothing has been finalised."

Asked about having a fixed tenure for officers, he said while the Commission agreed with this view, "We have to ensure that no inefficient officer takes advantage of this policy."

The Administrative Reforms Commission has so far gone into implementation of RTI, Crisis Management, Public Order and implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. It will submit its final report by August.

The PMO has sent a draft paper of the new Civil Services Act and the Commission is deliberating on it, Moily said and added "the need to revamp the Civil Services Act stems from the fact that civil servants should be able to deliver to the best of their ability."