BMC to transfer employees who decline promotions to avoid transfers

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in Mumbai issued a revised circular on Monday mandating that civic employees who deliberately decline promotions to avoid specific transfers will be transferred to another department or office. The policy update comes after BMC opposition leaders demanded a probe into several civic engineers who recently refused promotions to remain in their preferred posts.

According to civic officials, at least two executive engineers and eight assistant engineers recently declined promotions to the posts of deputy chief engineer and executive engineer, respectively. Following demands for an inquiry into these decisions, the civic administration issued an order on Monday revising its 1992 circular regarding the refusal of promotions by employees.

The revised circular establishes a strict process for how promotions must be handled. Under the new rules, promotion orders will be sent to the concerned employee in writing as well as to their official email address.

Once the promotion order is accepted, the employee is required to take charge of the new post within 15 days from the date of acceptance. Additionally, it is now mandatory for the head of the department to relieve the employee within a maximum of seven days.

The circular clarifies that even if the head of the department does not issue a relieving order, the employee must still join the new post without waiting for it, in order to meet the 15-day deadline. If the employee fails to take charge of the new post within 15 days from the date of acceptance of the promotion order, they shall be deemed to have refused the promotion.

If the departmental promotion committee's proceedings determine that an employee refused to accept a promotion with the intention of avoiding a transfer to a particular department, office, or post, that employee will be transferred to another department or office.