Bhubaneswar: Finance Minister Niranjan Pujari Monday informed the Assembly that the state is saddled with 1,20,512 vacancies at various positions in the state government departments. And the total vacancies touch 1.3 lakh (1,31,518) in 2017-18 financial year, if the vacancies in the government aided institutions and PSUs are included, the minister added.
While 1,31,518 government posts, both plan and non-plan, have been vacant till March 31, 2018 against the sanctioned strength of 5,83,021.
Pujari said this in a written reply to the question posed by Congress Legislature Party Leader Narasingha Mishra on “Sanctioned Strength of Government Employees”.
The questions posed by Mishra were, “What is the present sanctioned strength of Government Employees/Officers in the State? What is the vacancies position and how many posts have been abolished?”
Referring to the Annual Establishment Review Report, the Finance Minister said, “The sanctioned strength of government employees/officers as well as vacancies as on 31.03.2018 were 4,97,257 and 1,20,512 respectively. Besides, the sanctioned strength and vacancies of the organisations receiving grant-in-aid as on 31.03.2018 are 85,764 and 11,006 respectively.”
“A total of 41,635 posts have been abolished in different departments from 1999 to 2008,” he said.
An analysis of Interim Budget document and Pujari’s statement Monday show that job vacancies have increased by at least around 5 per cent in many vital departments over the period from 2015 to 2018.
A comparative analysis for the period revealed that the state government has made recruitments to 20,000 posts. As on March end 2018, around 26 per cent of over 4.97 lakh sanctioned posts in the state institutions are lying vacant.
The comparative data from 2015-16 reveals a rise in vacancies in some vital departments like Home, Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, Rural Development, Works, Cooperation, Food & Civil Supplies, Skill
Development, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water.
One of the significant facts is the state had around 10 lakh job aspirants in 2017-18.
