As the Ministry of Finance, etc. are aware, clause 6 of the Scheme for Joint Consultative Machinery and Compulsory Arbitration for Central Government employees provides inter alia for the setting up of Office Councils for dealing with local questions. According to the instructions contained in paragraph 2 of this Department’s O.M. No. 5/10/71-JCA, dated the 21^st November, 1972, nominations to the Staff Side of an Office Council should be from amongst the staff of the Office/Establishment for which the Office Council has been constituted, or from amongst the honourably retired employees or ex-employees of that Office/Establishment, who may be permitted by Government to be members of the Office Council.

    2.     It has been represented by the Staff Side of the Departmental Council of the Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms that, as the Central Secretariat Service (upto and including the grade of Section Officers), the Central Secretariat Stenographers Service and the Central Secretariat Clerical Service are decentralized and as the common service problems of each CSS cadre are dealt with in the Ministry/Department controlling the cadre, there should be a common forum at which the common service problems of each CSS cadre might be discussed, and that such effective discussion would be facilitated if the recognized staff associations concerned were permitted to nominate their representatives to the common forum from among the staff in any of the offices in the particular CSS Cadre. This demand has been considered in the Departmental Council of the Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms, and in pursuance of an agreement in that Council it has been decided, in partial modification of the instructions referred to in paragraph 1 above, that the common service problems of a CSS Cadre may be discussed in the Office Council of the cadre authority (main Ministry/Department controlling in cadre), and that the recognized staff associations representing the CSS categories of staff, i.e., the staff of the Central Secretariat Service, Central Secretariat Stenographers Service and the Central Secretariat Clerical Service, may be allowed to nominate their representatives to the Office Council of the cadre authority from among the staff working in any of the Offices included in the CSS cadre, and not necessarily only from the staff working in the Office of the Cadre authority.

Sd/-
M.K. VASUDEAN
Under Secretary to the Govt. of India