Punjab asks IAS Officers to submit complete proposal for foreign tour approval

Chandigarh, October 8, 2012: The Punjab government today issued guidelines to all IAS officers to submit detailed application according to the check list issued by the government for seeking permission to go abroad at least 15 days before the tour.

According to an official spokesman, it has been noticed that cadre clearance/sanction proposals/proposals for foreign tours of IAS officers sent to personnel department usually lacked purpose of their foreign trip and also give incomplete details of the delegation and does not give information regarding the expenditure being borne on the tour.

Besides this in number of cases, these proposals were being submitted just 2-3 days before the tour resultantly the concerned authorities got very short time to process such cases.

The spokesman said that the cases for cadre clearances/sanction of foreign tours of IAS officers should be submitted at least 15 days in advance. Besides this, before sending any such proposal to the personnel department the concerned administrative department should ensure such details like the name of institution sponsoring foreign tour/programme, whether sponsoring organisation is a private or government/international, economic resources of the sponsored organization, any personal motive or benefit of the organization sending foreign tour invitation, the purpose of foreign tour, the benefit of foreign tour/programme to government/concerned department, which organisation/department would bear the expenditure, the size of delegation for foreign tour/seminar/study tour, whether the permission of Chief Minister has been taken for the foreign tour.

The spokesman further said that it has to ensured prior permission of Government of India if the foreign tour for 3 weeks or more or the officer was invited directly and Punjab government was not bearing any expenditure on that or in the case invitation was from any private concern or officer was to get any fee or remuneration for work done by him.  

The officers have been asked to give detail of expenditure to be borne during foreign tour. Instructions in this regard have been sent to all Principal Secretaries, Administrative Secretaries and Head of Departments.