Change the counseling rules to ensure that all panchayats in Karnataka get enough officers

Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Eshwar B. Khandre. Photo credit: File photo

The Karnataka government plans to use the advisory process for transfer and posting of panchayat development officers (PDOs) to ensure that no panchayat suffers from vacancies.

In a letter to the Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department, Minister Eshwar Khadre noted that the transfer and posting of departmental officers and employees has been done through a counseling process for several years. “However, despite this, some panchayats had sufficient staff while others suffered from vacancies. This has led to a situation where service delivery is suffering and common people are facing serious hardships. The situation needs to be addressed. The staff in each assembly constituency should be properly deployed to see that no panchayat suffers from vacancies,” the minister said in the letter.

RDPR officers say that in some panchayats, long-standing vacancies are forcing them to allow lower-level employees such as panchayat secretaries and bill collectors to take over the duties of panchayat development officers and office heads.

“Counseling is a transparent process. It has managed to address some long-standing grievances of our officers and employees. However, the process has some limitations. Since the selection of posts is based on the selection of officers, the posts in panchayats which are close to the state capital or district headquarters are filled up quickly. But in reality, the demand for such posts is more than the number of posts that still plague small panchayats and vacancies in remote areas. This trend is higher in Kalyan Karnataka and Kittur regions Karnataka. We may have to modify the counseling process a bit, but we will,” said a senior officer.

“One of the changes will be to consider an assembly constituency as a consolidation staff unit. Previously, taluks and wards were used to group staff members. This presented some problems as some taluks are larger than constituencies and some districts are parts of two or more taluks. Using a taluk as a unit will solve another problem to a large extent.”

“RDPR is facing two challenges. There are some unfilled vacancies in the department and there are some issues in the transfer and posting system. We want to address both. This will be done gradually,” Mr Khadre said. “We want to ensure equitable deployment of officers. We don’t want any part of the state to suffer from vacant posts. We are not making any major changes in the system. We just want to improve the system to meet our challenges,” he said.

The minister said he has written to the Karnataka Public Service Commission to speed up the PDO recruitment process. Recruitment is underway for 150 CHOP positions in the state cadre. The exam was completed in 2025 but the final selection list was not released. “I have instructed the officers to publish the final list of shortlisted candidates as soon as possible,” the minister said.

Published – 19 Jun 2026 13:46 IST