Postal Manual Vol. VIII - India Post

2-A. The Head of a Circle will inspect his own office once a year and submit the Inspection
Report to the Director General, Posts. After six months a further complete report indicating the
action taken on various paras, where action is called for will be sent to the Directorate, and if there
is any para on which action could not be completed within that period the reasons for the same will
be indicated in the report. The office of the Director of Postal Life Insurance will be inspected
once a year by the Senior Deputy Director General or the Deputy Director General in-charge of
Postal Services, besides the inspection by the Director himself.
3. Visits to offices, sections and mail lines. – (1) The head offices and principal mail lines,
as also sorting mail offices and sections in the circle should be visited by the Head of the Circle as
often as he conveniently can. At each visit to a Presidency or first class head office, the
administrative work of the postmaster should be examined with reference to the standard
inspection questions relating thereto. A Postmaster General should, if possible visit every station
which is the headquarters of a district at least once in two years. While visiting the headquarters of
a Superintendent, R.M.S. he should carefully scrutinise the accounts work of the head record
office. It is important that the Head of the Circle should be personally acquainted with the leading
district or ordinates. He should examine the working in all its branches of every office or section
he visits, enquire whether the convenience of the public is met in every legitimate way and, pay
particular attention to the improvement of sorting arrangements.
(2) Important sub-offices should be visited whenever possible and the efficiency of the
rural delivery should be tested by visiting small offices, as opportunity occurs, in the course of a
tour.
4. Disposal of copies of order book remarks. – The Head of a Circle should persona lly
dispose of all copies of order book remarks submitted to him in respect of inspections and
verifications of accounts. He should also, at times, call for and examine the inspection or
verification notes on record in Superintendents’ offices and also the copies of order book remark
submitted by Inspectors to Superintendents.
5. Examination of Diaries. – The Head of a Circle must personally examine the diaries of
Superintendents (Genl-1) so as to check idleness and unduly long halts and, in the R.M.S. also to
see that they spend a sufficient time in mail vans and mail offices visited. He should specially see
that Superintendents do not allow their inspection and verifications to fall into arrears, and should
take care that inspection is not rendered unnecessarily expensive by officers returning (unless for
urgent reasons) to headquarters before finishing the inspection of all the offices, sections or mail
offices in the quarter to which they had proceeded.
NOTE – In major Circles, the Head of the Circle may, at his description, permit the Director
of Postal Services to scrutinise the weekly diaries.
6. Examination of Copies of Punishment Registers. – The Head of the Circle must
examine the copies of punishment registers (APP 32(a)) submitted by subordinate offices so as to
keep a close watch on the punishments awarded and to ensure that officials are not kept under
suspension unnecessarily.
7. Control over pension work. – The Head of a Circle must keep a constant watch on the
pension work of the circle. To this end, he must personally scrutinise the consolidated return of
pending pension and gratuity cases compiled each month in his office from the similar returns
(Est-52) submitted to him by subordinate officers and should take immediate steps to accelerate
the completion of cases which the consolidated return shows to have been pending for three
months or more. He should also, from time to time, test the completeness and accuracy of the
return by reference to the cases themselves when these come before him, and make it the rule that,
except in unavoidable circumstances, no pension or gratuity case should finally leave his office for