Knowledge about departmental inquiries relating to public servants and Central Government Servants cannot be deemed complete unless one is thorough with the texts of the relevant Regulations governing these inquiries. This is applicable both to those who are responsible for holding such inquiries and the delinquent officers who seek to defend themselves.

Departmental Inquiries can no longer be deemed as a mere administrative process guided by the policy of individual management of different organisations. These are bound by statutory regulations in respect of all public servants. A thorough knowledge of the governing provisions is an essential pre-requisite for conducting bonafide inquiries, as also for the efforts by delinquent officers who deem themselves innocent of the allegations leveled against them, to present their defence and redeem themselves.

We have earlier studied the evolutionary process describing how the system of conducting departmental inquiries and the framework of rules and regulations that provide them a definite structure and process have evolved.

The Rules governing disciplinary process of Central Civil Service employees may be deemed as the source code. We have therefore included in this kit the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965 as the first item. There are 27 public sector banks. But in all these cases DA Regulations are modeled on CCS(CCA) Rules and the respective Boards of these banks have followed the guidelines of the Government of India and formulated their individual DA Regulations after getting approval of both the Government of India and the RBI. I have included as a model the DA Regulations and the Conduct Regulations of Punjab National Bank, the oldest of the Nationalised banks.

The Central Vigilance Commission has perfected the system of conducting departmental inquiries, through their Commissioners of Departmental Inquiries. Their Manual is elaborate and deals extensively with all aspects of conducting inquiries. While the entire contents of the Manual is listed, only Chapters relevant for Bank Officers (Chapter 10, 11 and 12) are reproduced verbatim.

CVC has also issued detailed guidelines for conducting inquiries against Officers of Public Sector Banks. These are also included in these Pages.