Thursday, July 12, 2012

Justice Aborted by Out of Court Settlement



Bank has misinterpreted court proceeding, out of court settlement and filing of compromise paper and once again initiated the disputed promotion process which has been frequently stayed and frequently stay vacated. 


After all why bank is so much in hurry to conduct promotion process which has disputed conditions applicable for various scale officers differently and which are discriminatory. Even if promotion process is delayed for a few years in genuine quest of justice, I think bank is not likely to suffer any loss and sky is not going to fall on the earth due to delay in court judgement. After all there are hundreds of junior officers who are though not found fit for promotion to higher scale in the past are assigned the duty of higher scale. On the contrary there are several officers promoted to higher scale but are given the duty of lower scale.

A petition was filed in Chennai High Court by an aggrieved officer through his union leaders (not majority union) challenging various conditions imposed in promotion policy framed under dictates of Ministry of Finance. 


When bank management found trapped in its own corrupt game, it called flatterer leaders of majority trade union of officers and also leader associated with above court case and persuaded and forced them applying their managerial tactics to arrive at an compromise settlement to dilute the effect and repercussion of aforesaid court case.

Accordingly a petition for out of court settlement was drafted and signed by petitioner and defendant and filed in Chennai court to abort the court proceedings which is as good as miscarriage of justice before its delivery. 


I simply ask a question, If a murderer kills a person and when the aggrieved family files a case in court of law, the murderer forces or persuades or blackmail the family to sign a out of court settlement to puncture the proceeding s of court, to abort the court proceedings and finally to force miscarriage of justice before its delivery, will court act upon such out of court settlement and deliver judgment as per wishes of murderer and give relief to the murdererer?

If such out of court settlement is arrived between the culprit and the victim, between the exploiter bank management and the exploited employee and between the petitioner and the defendant particularly when the outcome of the court case may affect the future of hundreds of other officers in a similar way,--- 

May such out of  court settlement filed in  court and at police stations clears the path for  exoneration of the culprit and the evil doers? 

Are such settlement meant to abort the justice meant for officer community as a whole and not for any individual though case was filed by an individual? 

Can a developed and educated society allow perpetuation of reign of injustice with other similarly  aggrieved officers only because they have not filed case in court of law?

In the case filed by bank in Chennai court the petitioner also signed an out of court settlement with bank management where one post will be reserved for the petitioner and bank will conduct written test for all other officers desirous of promotion from scale III to scale IV . By such illegal agreement and then by taking the concurrence of flatterer majority trade union officials , bank management once again initiated the promotion process which was stayed by the court.

It is learnt from reliable sources that Court has not yet decided in the matter. Still in the name of court order promotion process has once again been started by the bank without removing all discriminatory clauses and without giving adequate  justice to other officers.Truth is yet to be validated .

Officers from scale I to II and from scale II to III have two options one with fast tract and another with normal track. Officers from scale III to scale IV will now have to pass through Computer skill test, written test, Group discussion and interview. Scale IV to V with group discussion and Interview. And finally officers interested promotion from scale V to VI and VI to VII have to pass through only through Interview only.

How it is acceptable that officers in scale I to scale III getting 60 marks will be given chance to appear in promotion process and scale IV and above will not be given same privilege?

How it is necessary to pass computer skill test for scale  III officers before participating in promotion process and not necessary for other scale officers?

In all the promotions however unwarranted, questionable and avoidable importance is attached to marks on Annual Appraisal Reports and that in Interview. Marks in APR are given to an officer by different appraiser in different way with biased mind. If the appraiser is whimsical, selfish, corrupt and greedy, he or she can spoil the career of an honest performing officer by giving extremely poor marks even though the concerned officer is sincere and hard working. On the other hand such unsuitable appraise give highest marks to a non performing officer who earn bribe through unfair means and share with the higher officials.


 In India where 90% of senior officials are corrupt and caste biased, an officer cannot dream of justice and cannot imagine of appropriate, suitable marks in APAR as per his or her performance, efficiency and potential to perform. 


Is it justified to rely upon such marks which are not at all linked with real performance?

Similarly interview is conducted by various Interview Panels constituted by managing committee and these interview panels carry out interview of officers at different centers and give marking as per their whims and fancies. Different panels have different style of marking. 


God knows what features of officers are tested in 2 minutes of interview which could not be tested in 5 to 35 years of service through APAR, written test and group discussions. I smell only bad intention in entire promotion process.

After all what is harm if all officers in order of seniority are promoted and given a chance to perform. After all Human Resource Department of each bank management have written history of all officers and they know ins and out of all officers and they know which officer is good and which is bad in real banking. Bank management at central level knows the marks of all officer in all scales on all fixed parameters like educational qualification, job responsibility and that on APAR Officers. 


Hence they may prepare a merit list at central level of all officers aggregating all such undisputable marks and based on this they can promote an officer or reject an officers if his marks is less than a cut off marks or they may prepare a list of officer in order of marks equivalent to number of vacancies in particular scale. In this way the system will be transparent and well recorded and there will be lesser scope for manipulation. 


At least senior officers who have devotedly worked in bank for two or three decades will not be rejected by interview panel to give chance to a young officer of their choice compromising merit and potential of the officer. It is worthwhile to mention here that marks given by interview panel in 2 minutes of interview cannot be challenged in any court of law and one cannot prove that he has been poor marks willfully and unjudiciously.

Officers who are getting poor marks in APAR, job responsibility and educational qualification will automatically appear in the bottom part of merit list thus prepared. In this way management of bank will get rid of untalented and non performing officers in the most judicious way.IN this way reign of injustice will end as soon as system of interview is discarded from promotion process. I find APAR also unsuitable but at least better than whimsical and unchallengeable marking given by Interview panel.

It is however not acceptable to corrupt executives of higher management. This is why they forced and  or persuaded petitioner and took the concurrence of majority trade unions to arrive at an out of court settlement. They agreed to compromise with merit and allowed officers to participate in promotion process even though he got 60 marks only in APAR. In this way bank management in the name of merit strangulated the life of meritorious officers. They know very well that their team of officers constituting interview panel has invested with ample power to reject any officer in interview by giving him 5 out of 25 in Interview and select any officer by giving whimsically 25 out of 25 marks in interview to choose officers of their choice. In this way they have big scope to nullify the impact of higher marks obtained by a senior officer in Job responsibility or APAR parameter.

If a Special Investigating Team is set up to investigate the fraudulent game being played by bank management in promotion process and if they look into APAR marking of last ten years of top 100 executives and compare the same with the marks given to such officers by interview panel, the bitter truth of fraud will precipitate and then only real exposure of promotion process will emerge.

If SIT thus constituted  honestly looks into past record of at least 100 top executives, I am very much confident truth will come out. 


Following startling truth may come out in the open

·         Officers who were indulged in bribe led lending got higher marks by appraiser than who devotedly performed in the interest of bank.
·         Officers who were served charge sheet for various irregularities got higher marks in APAR and officers who fought for safe lending given poor marks in APAR.
·         Officers who were indulged in WWW got higher marks than officers who believed in work and work only.
·         Officer whose bribe lending led to rise in Non Performing Assets (NPA) were given better marks in interview.
·         Officers who were given poor marks in APAR got higher marks in Interview and officers who were given best marking by their appraiser on account of their best performance were give very poor marks in interview.Officers who got more than 90 marks in APAR during last 10 to 20 years were rejected in promotion process and officers who got less than 75 marks have been promoted.
·         Officers APAR marks emanating from field level were ignored and fabricated marks were allotted to an officer to promote or reject him.
·         And so on,

Many startling facts will come out and then only government will realize the real reason behind abnormal rise in bad assets in all public sector bank as also the real reason behind growing frustration among officers, growing indifference and unwillingness among senior officers towards   promotion process and reason for young and inexperienced officers given the responsibility of running a branch jeopardizing the interest of the bank.

SIT will also tell the truth of court cases. It will come out how court cases in last two three decades were closed and justice was aborted by forcing petitioners to enter into out of court settlement.

Last but not the least, bank management in the name of merit is giving promotion to young and inexperienced officers and thus giving higher responsibility to incompetent persons and jeopardizing the quality of bank assets, profitability of the bank, the quality of customer service and the interest of investors. 


It is true that by giving quick promotions to young officer bank management divide the unity of officers and puncture the trade union movement against reign of injustice and ensure there is no IR problems. But in the long run it is not only Human resource of the bank who suffer in wage revision caused by poor performance of the bank but it also tarnishes the image of the bank in investors and shakes the confidence of genuine customers of the bank whose future depends on financial support of bank. 

When Human Resource in any organization is not devoted and motivated, bad customers will get the opportunity to pay bribe and get sanction of credit facility for their business and thus contribute in increasing the volume of bad assets. It is undoubtedly true but unfortunate that during last two decades HRD of all banks have faced severe erosion in quality and they HRD have completely failed to give justice to their work force and to the bank they serve.



If association leaders manage choice transfer and choice promotion and choice posting of a few effective officers in unfair way, these officers become great flatterer of leaders sacrificing the interest of officer community. Leaders rule on the same principle as management and i.e. divide and Rule.

Top ranked officials parts of top Management similarly pick officers for cream posting and out of turn promotion who help them in earning illegal wealth through unfair mean. 

After all who will bell the cat?

When protectors (trade union leaders )are also acting as destructors of their members and how an officer can expect justice when their leader stab them from behind?




Why NPA is more in public sector banks and less in private banks?


Why Profit of private banks grow year after year but public sector banks exhibit fall in profit?


Why per employee business and per employee in private banks is more than that in PS banks?


Why investors have more faith on private bank shares than government bank shares?


Is global recession real cause behind rise in bad assets?


If yes why does it not affect private banks?


Why quality of manpower is found better than that in government banks?


Why customer service quality is rated poor in government banks?

 

4 comments:

majji js murthy said...

What Mr.Danendra Jain wrote in the article is an absolute truth and is happening in all Public sector Banks and more so in Union Bank. Irregularities in promotions, recruitment, postings and manipulations in APARs. The matter was taken up with Finance Secretary and I don't know to what extent he will look into these irregularities and rectify the injustice done to many officers. Regarding recruitment, I wrote a letter to the previous CMD of the Bank, but no action was taken - probably he was the kingpin in the scam. I also intend to write to the present CMD with some evidences in the irregularities in recruitment and hope some better sense prevail on the management to rectify the system. If that also fails probably I / we may have to release the details of irregularities in the recruitment process to press & TV channels. The better option for the management of the bank is to hand over the cases to CBI before Govt. is forced to hand over to CBI on public outcry. The time has come for every one of us to open up and say enough is enough and no more.

Nagarajan said...

Things will never change because the number of people who voice their feelings are very few. Changes have happened only when majority of the aggrieved persons participate in the movement against injustice, unfair practices etc.

Danendra Jain said...

Following are the comments given by one of Facebook member on Facebook

I scanned your blog I congratulate you for your research in Banking nice blog to read. I would like to give by observation to this.
NPA in public sector Bank may be less in real sense because true picture will only come which branch audit of the private sector is carried out. ICAI has recommended it to RBI (there is always a hidden NPA in private sector Bank) Now after system driven classification situation may be different.
Private sector Banks take quick decision in restructuring and CDR while process in PSU is bit slow and people fear to accountability and let go the account NPA to avoid any enquiry in future if restructured. we are also slow in appointing secularity agencies .
PSB are many in rural areas giving social Banking with not so big profitability. As per Narsimhan Committee these bank were supposed to open 40% branches in rural and Semi urban areas but they did not do it till date
The basic reason of more productivity is most of the work is outsourced and many sales executive are in contract basis with very low salary and few people get good salary. while calculating productivity and profitability the staff in payroll is very less.

The private sector bank fudge the result to increase the share price and market capitalisation and pay good amount to broker firm to keep their share good and high priced. whereas we are not bothered about share price but concentrate more on compliance.

If you observe one big private sector bank it has always have a consitant growth of 28-30% for many years as if the prepare the BS of next 31 March on 1st April. The customer service of the eGTB was excellent and it was upto doorstep of HNI customers still it collapsed. We can share some information sometime with my prediction that there are many SATYAM type companies who get may accolade (as SATYAM got before it collapsed )

If you talk of investors in terms of share market there are less than 10 million mostly concentrated in Gujrat and Aamchi Mumbai. So the depositors have more faith in PSB despite less rate of interest paid by them and not so great customer service. if we improve our customer service and change the transfer rule in bipartite Private sector can not match with PSB.

4. Indian Banking system so far has not been affected by global recession because we have less euro zone country risk. There is not much credit offtake in PSB as well as private sector. KV kamath created the retail market in India of housing/Car/personal Loan now this is being done by all but is stagnant now. So
Banking sector as a whole is not doing great at present.

5 Quality of manpower is more competent in PSB compared to private sector but then treasury of private sector is better than PSB you will observe that treasury income of private Banks is more in private whenever there is upward revision in rate of interest. The approach in private is professional rather than relationship type in PSB.

Above comments are given by Rajesh Kumar on Facebook on 18.06.2012

Danendra Jain said...

I submit hereunder an illustrative case of interview which will tell and which will expose the real intention of interviewer.

Ashok, a fresh computer graduate from a world-class University, goes for an interview in a software company.

The interviewer is Sunder, a grubby old man. And the first question he asks Ashok is, `Are you good at logic?'

`Of course,' replies Ashok.

`Let me test you,' replies Sunder. `Two men come down a chimney. One comes with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face.
Which one would wash his face?'

Ashok stares at Sunder. `Is that a test in Logic?' Sunder nods.

`The one with the dirty face washes his face', Ashok answers wearily.

`Wrong. The one with the clean face washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the
clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So,
the one with the clean face washes his face.'

`Hmm. I never thought of that," says Ashok. `Give me another test.'

Sunder holds up two fingers, `Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face.
Which one washes his face?'
`We have already established that. The one with the clean face washes his face.'

`Wrong. Each one washes one's face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and
thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So, the one with the
clean face washes his face. When the one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face washing his face, he also washes his face. So
each one washes one's face.'

`I didn't think of that!' says Ashok. `It's shocking to me that I could make an error in logic. Test me again!'

Sunder holds up two fingers, `Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face.
Which one washes his face?'
`Each one washes his face.'
`Wrong. Neither one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and
thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. But when the one
with clean face sees that the one with the dirty face doesn't wash his face, he also doesn't wash his face. So neither one washes his face.'

_Ashok is desperate. `I am qualified for this job. Please give me one more test!'

He groans when Sunder lifts his two fingers, `Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with
a dirty face. Which one washes his face?'

`Neither one washes his face', Ashok replies, `I have learnt this logic.'

`Wrong, again. Do you now see, Ashok, why programming knowledge is insufficient for this job? Tell me, how is it possible for two men to
come down the same chimney, and for one to come out with a clean face and the other with a dirty face? Don't you see the flaw in the
premise?'"