TED NewsDesk, New Delhi. Union Minister Jitendra Singh presided over the 317th executive council meeting of the IIPA as its new Chairman, appreciating the diligence and efforts of the institute’s faculty and officials, saying their commitment and hard work came out during the difficult times of the ongoing COVID pandemic when it established a digital classroom for conducting online classes.
On Wednesday, he asked the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) to increase collaboration with more universities and academic bodies to widen the scope of its curriculum. The IIPA is tasked to equip public servants in India with knowledge, skills and behaviour required for their jobs.
He said it is no small achievement that IIPA conducted as many as 14 online training programmes for officers from different services during the lockdown and post-lockdown period, as per a statement from the Ministry of Personnel. In addition, 62 research projects were also completed during the past year despite the COVID-19 related restrictions, said Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel. He also said that he hopes that various state branches and chapters of the IIPA will also take lead and extend their programmes through both virtual and semi-virtual means.
“He also suggested collaboration with more number of universities and academic bodies in order to widen the spectrum and range of IIPA curriculum,” the statement said. In his first executive council meeting after taking over as the chairman, Singh made the important announcement that the life membership of IIPA will be thrown open with effect from January 1, 2021, it said. He also called upon more serving officers to take up membership in the IIPA and noted that the government service rules do not forbid a serving official to become a member of IIPA, as per the statement.
The post of Chairman, IIPA fell vacant following the demise of T N Chaturvedi, former Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India, on January 5, 2020. Chaturvedi had taken over as Chairman of the IIPA in 2004 and continued to hold the post for sixteen years until his demise. The proceedings of the executive council meeting were conducted by S N Tripathi, former Secretary, Government of India and presently Director, IIPA, who has thus been re-designated as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the IIPA, the statement said.
Members of the executive council who attended the meeting included Amitab Kant (CEO, NITI Aayog), Shekhar Dutt (former Governor, Chhattisgarh), Professor Raj Kumar (Vice Chancellor, Punjab University), and Professor G B Prasad (Vice Chancellor, Tripura University), among others.
