No data available on temporary employees, says Centre; 25% jobs vacant

The NDA government at the Centre, in a response a Parliamentary question, has stated that it does not centrally maintain any data on the details of temporary staff employed by the government. This adds to the list of items that the government does not maintain data on. Additionally, the government has revealed in the responses that almost 25% posts are lying vacant in the union government.

The Minister of state in the ministry of personnel, Dr Jitendra Singh had stated that the government did not maintain this data to questions asked by Kerala MP and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee President K Sudhakaran.

The government had stated in 2020 that it had no data on the number of migrant workers who lost their lives during the nationwide lockdown; in 2021, the government stated that it had no data on number of farmers who died during the farmers protest when they were demanding the repeal of the three contentious farm laws. The government has additionally stated it has no information on the number of police personnel, Anganwadi workers, health care staff and Safai Karamcharis who died due to Covid-19, and no data on the deaths of RTI activists.

This “no data” answer from the government had even led the Wayanad MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to write on Twitter that the 'No Data Available' (NDA) government had no answers or accountability over several critical issues affecting the country.

The former Congress president’s dig came after the Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani stated that the union government had no data available on the number of Anganwadi workers who had died due to Covid-19. Attempting to obfuscate the issue, Irani said the union government does not implement the Anganwadi scheme, hence there is no data.

Vacancies in various union ministries

According to the response by Dr Jitendra Singh, there are 9.8 lakh vacancies in the union government. Of the total sanctioned 40,35,203 posts across various ministries in the government, only 30,55876 posts have been filled, thus 24.26% posts are lying vacant. Of the 78 departments and union ministries, at least 10 departments have 40% or more vacancies and 40 departments have vacancies of 30% or more.

A look at the vacancies across ministries will reveal a whole different story and point towards all the troubles emanating from the government. It is quite evident from the vacancies that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may extol virtues of scientific temperament but there are 69% vacancies in the Science and Technology department. Of the 12,442 sanctioned posts, only 3,899 have been filled. The Atomic Energy department, which comes under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister, has 9,460 vacancies. Of the sanctioned 38,153 posts, only 28,693 posts have been filled.

Even more revealing is the statistics from the Women and Child Development Ministry, which has 50% posts lying vacant. Irani’s ministry has 725 sanctioned posts, but only 372 have been filled.

Moreover, the minister has revealed that there are only 9.14% women employees in the union government at various posts out of a total of 30.87 lakh employees, according to the government. There are only 3,37,439 women employed by the central government. The government may have been aggressively promoting their “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Scheme”, but there is no attempt by the government to recruit more women.

Even with a President of the country, who hails from the tribal community, there are 46% vacancies in the Tribal Affairs Ministry where there are 320 sanctioned posts, of which only 173 have been filled.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who during the 2014 General Elections had called himself ‘son of Ganga’ and vouched to clean Ganga before elections in 2019, should also consider the number of vacancies in the Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Ministry. Of course, since 2014 the timelines for cleaning the river have been pushed forward by a few more years.

In the Water Resources Ministry there are 46% vacancies with only 8,639 posts filled out of the 15,499 sanctioned posts. The ministry is staring at 6,860 vacant posts.

There is a lot of noise around Agniveer military recruitment scheme, but there are 40.97% vacancies in the Defence (Civilian) Ministry with 3.8 lakh posts filled whereas there are a total of 6,46,042 sanctioned posts.

In the Ministry of Home Affairs under Amit Shah, there are 1,43,546 vacancies as of the sanctioned 10,85,728 posts, only 9,42,192 posts have been filled.

The Railways, which is one of the biggest employers, has 2.94 lakh vacancies. There are 15,14,007 sanctioned posts, but only 12,20,064 have been filled. This comes at a time when the employees and youngsters applying for jobs have constantly been expressing their fears and anxiety over the privatisation of Railways.