z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-05.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 390
390 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
to it by the Government of India without imposing upon its members the liability to serve under any of the Provincial Governments. Similarly there should be a Provincial Civil Service recruited and maintained in response to its own needs by every Provincial Government exclusively for its own employment. This recommendation cannot be said to involve any substantial change in the system. For although members of the Imperial Service and Provincial Service are liable to serve in any part in India, their All-India character is only nominal. For the cases in which a member of the Civil Service whether Imperial or Provincial has been called upon to serve in a Province different from the one in which he was originally posted are few. Almost all of them continued to work to the end in the same Province in which they were placed in the beginning. That being the case the reform which I have suggested will involve no change. It will only recognise facts as they exist.
- The grounds on which I press for this reform in the organisation of the Civil Service are many. First of all such a separation of the services into those which are Central in the sense that they are in the employment of the Government of India and those which are Provincial in the sense that they are in the employment of the Provincial Government has this immense advantage, namely that it is a reform which is eminently called for by the change in the character of the Provincial Government. If the present system was continued, ministerial responsibility would be difficult of realisation. Public Servants in India according to Section 96(B) of the Government of India Act no doubt hold their position during the pleasure of the Crown. But it must be remembered that the Act does not allow the Ministers the power to decide when His Majesty should be pleased to remove him from office. Although that power is given to the authority who appoints him yet the dismissed officer has been given a right of appeal to the Secretary of State. Not only the Minister has no right of dismissing an officer, but he cannot even punish him with impunity, because it is provided in the Act that if any officer appointed by the Secretary of State in Council thinks himself wronged by an order of an official superior in a Governor’s Province he has a right to complain to the Governor and the Governor by the Act as well as by the instrument of instructions is bound to inquire and pass such an order as may appear to him just and equitable. These provisions must make any Minister, however strong he may be, quite helpless against a recalcitrant member of the Civil Service who refuses to carry out the policy for which the Minister is responsible to the legislature in accordance with its wishes. Ministerial responsibility requires that a Minister shall have power effectively to deal with an erring officer working under him. He must also have the power to decide how many officers he must have and to what particular post any of them might be appointed. The existing provisions do not permit him any of the powers he must stand in sore need of. This anomaly was recognised by the Lee Commission which was appointed soon after the reforms were introduced. That Commission