Govt Panel Recommends Task Force To Fill 38 DIPAM Vacancies

New Delhi: Flagging concern over a large number of vacancies in the department of investment and public asset management (Dipam) under the finance ministry, a government panel has flayed the government, saying that ‘no tangible progress’ has been made in resolving vacancies at Dipam since the panel’s report presented in March. The panel also said, for a department overseeing a public asset portfolio exceeding Rs 42.76 lakh crore, routine administrative correspondence is grossly inadequate.

As per the report by the Standing Committee on Finance, there is 43 per cent vacancy in the Dipam and it has recommended setting up a task force to ensure the early filling of all 38 vacant positions. The committee, in its report tabled in Parliament in March, had noted that maintaining only 51 officers against a sanctioned strength of 89 - with critical shortages at the director (11 vacancies) and under secretary (8 vacancies) levels – ‘severely jeopardises’ the department's ability to execute complex transactions like the IDBI Bank sale or finalise CPSE MoUs.

“Such significant manpower shortages in a field requiring highly specialised financial and legal expertise undermine the department's capacity to effectively manage the disinvestment target and the recycling of prime real estate assets,” the panel report had noted.

In their ‘action-taken’ reply, the finance ministry said that Dipam has been pursuing the matter with the concerned departments on priority and that the matter of filling up vacancies of assistant section officers (ASOs), section officers (SOs), under secretaries, and assistant directors was taken up with the department of personnel and training (DoPT), department of expenditure (DoE), and department of economic affairs.

The committee, however, viewed with deep concern that depatment, despite overseeing an ambitious value maximisation agenda, has been allocated a modest budget of Rs 55.92 crore and is operating with a ‘crippling 43 per cent vacancy rate’. “The committee, therefore, urge the ministry of finance to pursue the matter on priority through a dedicated inter-departmental task force with DoPT and DoE to ensure early filling up of all 38 vacant positions,” the report said.

The committee had urged Dipam to formulate a carefully calibrated roadmap for the rollout of InvITs and REITs, supported by robust valuation safeguards and a transparent oversight mechanism. “Dipam must finalise a clear legal strategy, incorporating ‘Golden Share’ or indirect control models, to safeguard strategic autonomy in entities where state shareholding may drop below 51 per cent.

The ministry in its reply, however, said that there is no proposal at present to reduce government’s stake below 51 per cent in CPSEs except in those cases wherein strategic disinvestment is being pursued as per the approval of the cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA).

The committee, in its ‘action-taken’ report, also said that it considers this reactive stance ‘insufficient for complex, modern capital markets’, and re-emphasised the need to establish benchmarked governance standards by proactively codifying a legal architecture to permanently safeguard the government’s strategic oversight and national security interests in vital CPSEs whenever public equity dilution below 51 per cent occurs in the future.