Congress misleading on lateral entry, says Vaishnaw; cites Manmohan, Montek

New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) Accusing the Congress of making misleading claims on the government initiative of lateral entry into senior bureaucracy, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday asserted the move will not affect the recruitment of SC/STs in the all India services.

Vaishnaw said lateral entry in bureaucracy has been happening since the 1970s during the Congress-led governments and former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia were prominent examples of such initiatives taken in the past.

The minister argued that the 45 posts offered for lateral entry into bureaucracy amounted to 0.5 per cent of the cadre strength of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) comprising over 4,500 officers and will not cut into the roster of any service.

The tenure of lateral entry bureaucrats was three years and a possible extension for two years.

Vaishnaw said Manmohan Singh entered the government as a lateral entrant in 1971 as the economic adviser in the then Ministry of Foreign Trade and went on to become the finance minister and later the prime minister.

He said other key lateral entrants include technocrats Sam Pitroda and V. Krishnamurthy, economists Bimal Jalan, Kaushik Basu, Arvind Virmani, Raghuram Rajan and Ahluwalia.

Jalan served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the government and later the Governor of Reserve Bank of India.

Virmani and Basu were also appointed as the Chief Economic Advisors in 2007 and 2009 respectively.

Rajan also served as the Chief Economic Advisor and later went on to serve as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 2013 to 2016.

Ahluwalia was brought into government roles from academia and international organizations. He served as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission from 2004 to 2014.

Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, was appointed as the head of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in 2009, Vaishnaw said. PTI SKU AS AS