Change in counselling rules to ensure all panchayats in Karnataka get enough officers

The government of Karnataka plans to use the counselling process for transfer and posting of Panchayat Development Officers (PDOs) to ensure that no panchayat suffers from vacancies.

In a letter to the secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, Minister Eshwar Khadre has noted that the transfer and posting of officers and staff of the department was being done through a process of counselling for some years now. “However, despite this, some panchayats had enough staff while some others suffered from vacancies. This had led to a situation where the service delivery suffers, and the common people face severe hardship. The situation should be addressed. The staff in each Assembly constituency should be properly distributed to see that no panchayat suffers from vacancies,’’ the Minister’s letter stated.

RDPR officers say that, in some panchayats, long-standing vacancies are forcing them to allow lower level staff, like panchayat secretaries and bill collectors, to assume duties of Panchayat Development Officers and office superintendents.

“Counselling is a transparent process. It has succeeded in addressing some long-standing grievances of our officers and staff. However, there are some limitations in the process. Since the selection of postings are based on the choice of officers, posts in panchayats that are near the State capital or district headquarters are quickly filled. In fact, the demand for such postings exceeds the number of vacancies. However, panchayats in remote areas and small villages continue to suffer from long-pending vacancies. This trend is higher in Kalyan Karnataka and Kittur Karnataka regions. This needs to be addressed. We may have to tweak the process of counselling a bit, but we will do it,” a senior officer said.

“One of the changes will be to consider an Assembly constituency as a unit of consolidating staff. Earlier, taluks and districts were used to group the staff members. This posed some challenges as some taluks are bigger than constituencies, and some constituencies have parts of two or more taluks. Taking taluk as the unit will address the issue to a large extent,” said another officer.

“RDPR faces two challenges. There are some unfilled vacancies in the department, and there are some issues in the system of transfers and postings. We want to address both. That will be done in stages,” said Mr Khadre. “We want to ensure equitable posting of officers. We do not want any part of the State to suffer from vacancies. We are not making any major changes to the system. We just want to improve the system so that it addresses our challenges,” he said.

The Minister said that he had written to the Karnataka Public Service Commission to speed up the process of recruitment of PDOs. The recruitment to 150 posts of PDOs in the State cadre is pending. The examination was completed in 2025, but the final selection list was not issued. “I have instructed officers to release the final list of selected candidates as soon as possible,” the Minister said.