Para 53 — CSMOP
Original Rule Text
53. Records maintained by officers and their personal staff -
Each Department may issue Departmental instructions to regulate the review and weeding out/deleting of paper records maintained by officers and their personal staff. In this regard procedure laid down in CSMOP shall be followed.
What This Means
Para 53 deals with the records maintained personally by officers and their personal staff — files and papers kept in an officer's own room or by the Private Secretary or Personal Assistant — rather than by the Section. These personal files can accumulate over time and may contain sensitive correspondence, draft notes, or working papers that are not part of the official file system. They need to be periodically reviewed and cleared.
The para requires each Department to issue its own departmental instructions for regulating the review and weeding out — or deleting, in the case of digital records — of such personal papers. The general procedure in CSMOP provides the framework, but departments must operationalise it through their own specific instructions.
For Section Officers, this means that the personal tray and drawer files cannot grow without bound. Routine working papers that have served their purpose should be destroyed. Papers that are part of the official record should be placed on the appropriate file, not kept in a personal folder. Private Secretaries and Personal Assistants must also ensure that the dictation books, shorthand notes, and personal correspondence of their officers are systematically reviewed and sensitive material destroyed by shredding or burning.
This explanation was generated with AI assistance for educational purposes. Always refer to the official gazette notification for authoritative text.
Key Points
- 1Records kept personally by officers and their personal staff must also be periodically reviewed and cleared.
- 2Each Department must issue specific departmental instructions for this purpose.
- 3Officers should not accumulate working papers beyond their useful life in personal custody.
- 4Sensitive material — confidential and secret papers in personal custody — must be destroyed by shredding or burning when no longer needed.
- 5Papers that are part of the official record should be placed on the appropriate file, not kept in personal folders.
- 6This rule complements the broader records management framework of Chapter IX.
Practical Example
A Joint Secretary who retires after a five-year stint leaves behind two drawer-fulls of personal files, draft policy notes, unofficial correspondence, and working papers related to inter-ministerial negotiations. The PS to the JS should have maintained a log of these papers. On the JS's retirement, the PS reviews the files: papers that have been officially notated are already on formal files and the copies in the personal office are destroyed by shredding; draft policy notes that never made it to formal files are reviewed by the successor officer and either placed on a formal file if still relevant or destroyed; purely personal papers are returned to the retired JS. This process follows the departmental instructions issued under Para 53.
This explanation was generated with AI assistance for educational purposes. Always refer to the official gazette notification for authoritative text.
Frequently Asked Questions
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This explanation was generated with AI assistance for educational purposes. Always refer to the official gazette notification for authoritative text.