Functions of the Chief Secretary and State Secretaries of a State :

While the Governor and the chief minister enjoy a constitutional status under the Constitution of India, the chief secretary, his secretariat and state services have been created to make the state government function on the pattern of secretariat of the Central government.

The state secretarial consists of departments of state government which are headed politically by the ministers and administratively by the secretaries.

Administrative setup :

1. The chief secretary is the head of the entire state secretariat while a secretary is a head of one or two departments. The secretary is a senior administration officer of generalist variety. The secretary is the secretary to the state government as a whole and not to the individual minister concerned. The number of secretariat departments vary from state to state and may ranges from 15 to 40 departments.

2. The executive department has a top functionary called as head of the department. The health department in the secretariat for instance, is headed by the medical secretary, but the director of health is the head of the department. The latter is subordinate to the former. All secretariat depart­ments do not have ‘executive departments’.

3. Some of them like departments of finance, personnel, planning, administrative reforms, law, etc., offer advise. The head of the department may be a specialist and the secretary a generalist but no hard and fast rules exist in this regard. The merger and bifurcation of departments is a prerogative of the cabinet and it is a continuous process as per policy requirements of the government.

4. Public corporations may be attached to the departments and similarly state secretariat may also have a regular department of public enterprises. In addition to the functional departments the state secretariats have staff organisations like CM’s secretariat, cabinet secretariat and CS office which act as policy making centres with powers of coordination and control.

5. Right from the British times there exists a uniformity in the organisation and personnel system of the state departments. Usually, a secretary of the department is assisted by a hierarchical team of several junior officials called as: special secretary/additional secretary, joint secretary, deputy secretary, under secretary, and assistant secretary. The office component of the secretariat consists of assistants and clerks called as superintendent (or Section Officer), assistant superintendents, upper division clerks, lower division clerks, steno-typists and typists, and manual workers.

6. The secretary heads the department and acts as a principal adviser of the minister on adminis­trative and policy matters. He is personally responsible for the observance of Rules of Business and other activities of his department. He represents his department and can be called a link with other departments of the government.

7. He issues instructions and orders distribution of work among the staff and is responsible for the organisation and efficiency of the department. The additional secretary may function as secretary in relation to subjects allotted to his charge. He is the de facto head and deals directly with the minister. The deputy secretary acts on behalf of the secretary.

8. The under secretary has the responsibility of submitting all relevant materials to his seniors. The deputy secretary functions as one more level of scrutiny. The under secretary initiates actions on all communications and examines the papers under disposal and submits the case to the deputy secretary.

9. The secretarial officials are subject to tenure system and are appointed for a fixed term. They are drawn from the field and revert to the field after secretariat tenure and most of them belong to generalist services. The state secretariat like any other secretariat is a repository of authority of state government. It serves as a think tank and a coordinating nodal agency.

10. It is essentially a policy processing agency but it does offer advise, directions, guidance to field staff and prescribes proce­dures of work for the executive units in districts and below. The ARC found that the secretariats are doing non-secretarial functions. The Shiv Charan Mathur Commission tried to identify these specific functions of the state secretariat in Rajasthan.

Some of the following categories of functions of the state secretariat :

1. General Functions:

(1) Correspondence with the Government of India and other governments;

(2) Matters involving the framing of new legal enactments or rules or amendments in the existing ones, involving interpretation or relaxation of existing rules of government orders;

(3) Interdepartmental coordination;

(4) All matters of general policy;

(5) Inspection, reports and tour notes, recorded by the heads of departments;

(6) All matters relating to the preparation or adoption of new plan schemes and important modifi­cation in the existing schemes;

(7) Review of the progress of plan schemes, both physical and financial;

(8) All-India conferences and important conferences of state level;

(9) Delegation of powers;

(10) Public Accounts Committee, Estimates Committee, assembly and parliamentary questions;

(11) Litigation notices under Section 80, CPC;

(12) Appeals, revisions, etc., within the powers of the state government; and

(13) Territorial changes and changes at headquarters.

2. Finance Related Functions:

(1) All proposals involving new items of expenditure;

(2) Sanction of expenditure from the Contingency Fund;

(3) Scrutiny and approval of development budget, estimates, major appropriation of accounts, surrender of funds, and supplementary grants;

(4) Write-off cases beyond powers of heads of departments and audit objections regarding the offices of heads of departments, etc.;

(5) Financial sanctions not within the competence of the heads of departments.

3. Service Related Functions:

(1) Initial appointment of officers belonging to the state service of infliction of major punishments upon them;

(2) Creation of posts, their extensions and continuance re-employment, resignations, special pay, allowances and pensions not within the powers of the head of department;

(3) Matters relating to senior appointments, promotions, transfers and cases of disciplinary proceedings against gazetted officers;

(4) Approval of service rules and amendments thereto.

State secretariat system unlike the central secretariat system of the Union government works under a chief secretary. The Rules of Business allocate responsibilities through standing orders which are approved by the state cabinets. By and large all states have a uniform pattern and keep reforming it by recommendations of committees and commissions.Innovations like group system, cell system, O&M introduction, desk office system, attach system and officer-oriented system were experimented upon to cut on delays and improve the efficiency of the personnel.

The State Committees and later the ARC( (Administrative Reforms Commission) in its report on state administration in 1969 identified these areas of secretariat administration as problems of:

(1) Inordinate delay in decision-making.

(2) Interference of secretariat officials in executive affairs by their non-secretariat activities.

(3) Irrational grouping of subjects in departments.

(4) Lack of field experience of senior offices working under tenure system.

(5) Out datedness of allocation of subjects.

(6) Failure to adapt with the change of new governments in the states.

Thus, the neat separation between policy formulation and policy execution which is so often debated in academic circles is conspicuous by its absence. There is no uniformity of delegation of authority to executive heads of departments. The ARC struggled with it and suggested workable measures :

(1) “Due to the dominant position of the secretariat, secretariat appointments are considered prestigious. A secretariat posting ensures an officer’s stay in the state capital. Moreover, he escapes the pressures and tensions of the field which are enormous in a functioning democracy. A stay in the secretariat assures the official a cosy existence with many social amenities of life. He functions in close proximity to ministers and senior colleagues which helps in winning promotions and better postings. It should change.

(2) There are too many levels and functionaries involved in the secretariat leading to delays in the transaction of public business. The system is falling apart. The cell system can be a good example of innovative reform.

(3) There is the problem of over administration. The need for a bigger administrative apparatus will be left with the diversification of the functions of the government and the result is the expansion of the secretariat activities. Moreover it is easier to create new positions in the secre­tariat, as the persons with decision-making authority are all located in the secretariat and the human factors influence the decisions.”

The role of bureaucracy in Indian polity is largely determined by the secretariats and their working. The working of the cabinets and field establishments warrant radical change in the organi­sation of state and central secretariats.