Minutes of evidence taken before the Royal Commission upon Decentralization in Bengal of witnesses serving directly under the Government of India, volume 10 ([London?]: [House of Commons?], 1908)

200

APPENDIX :

(xiv) Municipalities and Local Boards ;
(xv) Examinations (except as regards Pashtu,
Baluchi, and any other Frontier language
in the North-West Frontier Province) ;
(xvi) Registration ;
(xvii) Copyright;
(xviii) The naturalization of aliens ;
(xix) Law and Justice (except as regards peti-
tions in jirga cases in the North-West
Frontier Province) ;
throughout British India, except British Baluchistan
and Ajmer-Merwara; and in Berar.
(xx) The Indian Arms Act, 1878 (XI of 1878);
(xxi) The Civil Medical Service ;
(xxii) J udicial and administrative establishments;
throughout British India, except the North-West
Frontier Province, British Baluchistan, and Ajmer-
Merwara ; and in Berar.
(xxiii) The nomination of Members of the Legis-
lative Councils of the Lieutenant-
Governors of Bengal, the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjab,
Burma, and Eastern Bengal and Assam.
9. In respect of all these subjects, except one, the
functions of the Government of India are limited
to control and supervision. The exception is the
administration of the penal settlement of Port Blair
in the Andaman Islands, in regard to which the Home
Department exercises the powers of a Local Govern-
ment and passes orders on all sorts of questions from
the provision of a fire engine to the building of a new
jail or the revision of the system of discipline. As
the department responsible for general administration
and internal politics a very large range of subjects
comes before it, and the scope of its duties is only
imperfectly indicated by the list cited above. When-
ever another department of the Government of India
has before it a question affecting the general adminis-
tration of the country or its internal politics, it is
bound by the Rules of Business to refer the case to
the Home Department for criticism and advice. The
number of such references is very large, and they
relate to a great variety of subjects. I may mention,
by way of illustration, the re-organization of the
Political Service, the Public Works Department
Engineering Staff, the Telegraph Department, the
Survey of India, the Imperial Customs Service, and
the Forest Service, the recruitment for the Opium
Department, the amendment of the Cantonment Code,
the supply of English stores, the re-organization of
the Indian Museum, the re-organization of police in
Native States, the development of Chiefs' Colleges and
various points arising from the report of the Excise
Commission. Where the constitution of a service or
any material addition to its strength is in question .the
main points which the Home Department has to con-
sider are (1) whether the principles laid down by
the Public Service Commission are observed and (2)
whether the proposed constitution is actuarially sound.
10. The Home Department is assigned to the special
care of an Ordinary Member of the Governor General’s
Council, but at the head of it is a Secretary to the
Government of India. Besides him the principal
gazetted officers are one Deputy Secretary, and two
Under Secretaries. The Officer in charge of the
Records of the Government of India is also ex-officio
Assistant Secretary in the Home Department, but his
duties, so far as the departmental work is concerned,
are confined to the minor head of business relating to
books and publications. Below them is the Registrar of
the department (also a Gazetted Officer) and 68 clerks,
who (excluding the three shorthand writers), are
employer: in the 12 sections into which the office is
divided. In four of these sections the men are
employed on work of a purely routine nature, such
as typing, and despatching correspondence, registering
the receipt of letters in the office, recording, and pre-
paring the volumes of proceedings of the department
which have to be transmitted to the Secretary of State.
The clerks attached to the remaining sections do the
more important clerical portion of the work of the
office. The practice is for these sections to put up
with each reference the papers which are required for
its disposal, and then to submit the files with notes on
them bringing out briefly the points on which orders
are required. On the return of the files to office,
letters are drafted for approval, giving effect to the

orders which may have been passed. The duties of
the Registrar are to exercise a general control over the
office establishment and to deal with all matters in the
first instance, affecting the proper working of the office.
He also disposes of some of the minor cases, such as
requests for papers from other departments of the
Government of India, replies to requests for rules
relating to examinations for the public service and
similar matters.
11. By an arrangement approved by the Secretary
of the department, certain classes of work are allotted
to each of his junior officers, viz., the Deputy Secretary,
the two U nder Secretaries and the ex-officio Assistant
Secretary, and cases requiring the orders of the Govern-
ment of India are submitted to them in the first
instance. These officers dispose on their own authority
of such cases of minor importance as by the practice of
the department they are competent to do. Of the
remaining cases, some are submitted by the Under
Secretaries to the Secretary, and others (including all
the work from the ex-ofliclo Assistant Secretary) to the
Deputy Secretary. These two officers in turn dispose
of such files as in their opinion are not of sufficient
importance to be laid before the Honourable Member
in charge of the Department or His Excellency the
Governor-General—the rest of the cases are submitted
by the Deputy Secretary and Secretary to the Honour-
able Member. The files which are eventually sub-
mitted to His Excellency for orders are ordinarily of
the following descriptions :—
(d) Cases relating to certain specified appointments
which are in His Excellency’s patronage.
(b) Correspondence with the Secretary of State
which by the practice of the Department
neither the Secretary of the Department
nor the Honourable Member in charge of it
is competent to deal with himself.
(c) Cases in which proposals emanating from pro-
vincial Governments are being rejected.
(d) Cases affecting questions of importance or
matters of policy.
His Excellency passes orders on all such files, either
disposing of them himself, or directing that they shall
be brought up before a meeting of his Executive
Council for final decision.
12. It will be observed from the system briefly
described above that in order to cope with the enormous
volume of business which comes before the Home
Department, measures are taken which enable a con-
siderable number of cases to be disposed of at the
initial stages by the several officers, according to their
standing, so as to enable those higher in authority to
give their attention to1 the more difficult problems.
But whatever may be the internal arrangements for
the disposal of matters of minor importance, the
Secretary is solely responsible for the entire business
of the department and is apprised in one way or
another of all that is taking place. As regards work
which is disposed of on their own responsibility by
the officers junior to him, tabular statements are com-
piled which give a brief substance of the reference and
the orders passed on it. Such statements are submitted
weekly both to the Secretary and Honourable Member,
and it is open to them, if they think it necessary, to-
call for the files and revise the orders. The Secretary,
in turn, submits a similar weekly list of cases disposed
of by himself to the Honourable Member in charge of
the department. A further scrutiny is exercised by
the Secretary over such portion of the work of the
Deputy Secretary as is submitted by the latter direct
to the Honourable Member, through an arrangement
which requires that all cases returning from the
Honourable Member shall be submitted to him before
any orders issue. These are the means by which the
Secretary is enabled to keep in complete touch with
the entire working of the office.
13. Besides the officers mentioned in the preceding
portion of this note, the officers closely associated with
the Home Department are the Director-General Indian
Medical Service, the Sanitary Commissioner with the
Government of India, the Director-General of Educa-
tion, the Director-General of Archaeology, and the
Director Criminal Intelligence. These officers aid the
Home Department with their advice on the class of
work falling within their respective spheres of duty..