The babus can no longer take their jobs for granted as the Modi government is in no mood to spare the non-performing bureaucrats or even the lower rank officers. On Thursday, the Centre ordered 33 senior officials of the revenue department to take premature retirement owing to their non-performance.

Before this, 72 officers from various departments have been dismissed following the departmental and disciplinary action in the last two years. But this is the first time that the Centre has taken action against such a large group of officials.

All 105 officers dismissed or to be dismissed are above 50 years of age. If ministry sources are to be believed, the Centre has taken this action to send the message that officials sitting in big positions need to take their work seriously, and not for granted, and start performing for the welfare of the masses.

PM Narendra Modi has been receiving complaints about the lackluster attitude of the babus. In January this year, the PM had instructed the secretaries of the concerned departments to take action against non-performing officials in their ranks.

In the latter half of January, the Centre had shortlisted 122 deputy secretary level officials in various ministries and departments. Out of them, 13 belonged to higher education, 17 to defence ministry, 7 from health and family welfare, and 6 from the commerce ministry.

The government is also working on an exercise to rotate officers working in sensitive posts to improve efficiency.