Revision summary
Splitting ₹35 lakh into smaller bills to avoid the boss’s sanction is a GFR violation, even if it is a common trick. The ethical issues are career fear, a named vendor, and the habit of collective cheating. Rajesh’s options include splitting, lawful phasing, written illegal orders, or a proper sanction. The right choice is a single proposal to the competent authority and a competitive purchase. A promotion that needs a false indent is not worth the integrity it costs.
Model answer
Introduction
Rajesh can sign a ₹35 lakh stationery order only if he breaks it into pieces under ₹30 lakh, which GFR forbids as splitting to dodge sanction. His boss, who writes his ACR, wants speed and that vendor. Promotion sits in the next room. This is how honest men become audit paragraphs: not with a suitcase, with a shortcut for a grade.
Body
(a) Options
Rajesh can split the bill as “office practice” and sleep badly. He can send the full proposal to the boss for sanction, which is what GFR wants, and explain the delay. He can ask for a smaller urgent lot within his power and a second indent later for the rest if the need is genuinely phased, which is not the same as fake splitting of one need. He can seek written orders from the boss to split, which transfers the sin but still may not save him in audit. He can recuse and ask another officer to process. He can quietly refuse the named vendor and go to GeM for a competitive buy at the lawful level.
(b) Ethical issues
Probity and rule of law versus careerism. Integrity versus loyalty to a reporting officer. Objectivity in vendor choice (a named seller is a red flag). Courage (Second ARC’s value) versus fear of a bad ACR. Collective wrong: “everyone splits” is the banality of office evil. Stewardship of public money. Kant: if every AO splits, GFR is a dead letter.
(c) Most appropriate
The most appropriate path is to refuse the split, put up a single proposal of ₹35 lakh to the competent authority (the boss) the same day, state that GFR bars splitting, move the indent on GeM or a competitive process unless a documented emergency exists, and note the conversation in a contemporaneous file. If the boss lowers the ACR, Rajesh still has a defensible honour; a promotion bought by an audit objection is a promotion with a fuse. If the boss sanctions in writing, the purchase can proceed lawfully. If the boss insists on a split in writing, Rajesh should not obey an illegal direction and should escalate to the next authority or CVO.
- Gandhi: means are everything. A clean ACR is a fruit. A split indent is a rotten means.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD GFR[GFR no split] --> R[Rajesh] ACR[ACR fear] --> R R --> UP[Put up 35 lakh for sanction] R --> NO[No fake split]
Conclusion
Rajesh should not split the purchase to please his reporting officer. He should send the full case up for sanction, buy competitively, and accept that a fair ACR is better than a promotion sitting on an audit objection.
Quick related
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Next question in the 2025 paper (Q11). View answer →
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Is a genuine two-stage need the same as splitting?
No. If January’s paper is actually needed in January and July’s in July, two indents can be honest. One hidden pile is not.
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What if the boss never signs?
Then the delay is the boss’s. Rajesh’s file shows he did not break the rule to fake speed.
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Q1 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) In the present digital age, social media has revolutionised our way of communication and interaction. However, it has raised several ethical issues and challenges. Describe the key ethical dilemmas in this regard. (b) "Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment but a product of civil education and adherence of the rule of law." Examine the significance of constitutional morality for public servant highlighting the role in promoting good governance and ensuring accountability in public administration.
Ethics in Public Administration
Social media speeds speech and also rumour, hate, privacy harm and blurred official voice. The ethical knots are truth versus virality, privacy versus publicity, and freedom versus incitement. Constitutional morality, as Ambedkar taught, is learned respect for constitutional forms, not a natural feeling. For a civil servant it means equality, dignity, reasoned process and files that can face a court. Good governance and accountability rest on that habit when popular anger or a minister wants a shortcut.
Q2 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) Carl von Clausewitz once said, "War is a diplomacy by other means." Critically analyse the above statement in the present context of contemporary geo-political conflict. (b) Keeping the national security in mind, examine the ethical dilemmas related to controversies over environmental clearance of development projects in ecologically sensitive border areas in the country.
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Clausewitz is right that wars have political aims; he is incomplete because civilians, nuclear weapons and non-state actors change the moral math. Just-war rules and Gandhi’s stress on means still bind a democracy. Border projects pit delay-as-threat against forest, landslide and tribal consent. The ethical path is necessity with least harm, not a fake choice between soldier and tree. Integrity is a file that records both the threat and the ecology.
Q3 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS IV · 10 marks
(a) "Those who in trouble untroubled are, Will trouble trouble itself." - Thiruvalluvar. (b) "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes." - William James. (c) "The strength of a society is not in its laws, but in the morality of its people." - Swami Vivekananda.
Attitude
Thiruvalluvar’s line is about equanimity: a calm officer can master a crisis that a panicked one worsens. William James argued that changing attention and attitude can change a life; for an officer that means seva, not cynicism, without blaming the poor. Vivekananda held that a society’s real strength is the people’s morality, not the thickness of the statute book. Laws still matter; they work when character supports them. Together the quotes train inner weather, professional will and social ethics.
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