During the 1960s and 70s relentless political struggle for a considerable period resulted in a political force in every section of the society. Government Officers and other Government Employees were not exception.
Associations were engaged in mutual confrontation mainly instead of looking at the cadre-benefit, was dominated by biased officers coming from the background of politicalized atmosphere of 60’s and 70’s of our state as against the new generation ROs recruited through WBCS (Group'C') and who were facing and witnessing glaring anomalies in respect of pay scale in Group ‘C’ and its promotion.
The new generation officers coming from WBCS Group ‘C’ carefully observed the evils of political involvement in the Association. One Association has an antagonistic approach towards Government philosophizing that Government (Employer) and Employee relation can never be friendly. This attitude virtually closed the door of negotiation at the government level and the demand of the Association remained practically on paper without any penetration.
As against it, the other considered the then Left Front Government as pro-employee. Hence although their access before the government was far better than the other Association, yet because of their pre-conceived stance, they failed to steer this advantage into reality in fulfilling the demands of the cadre as a whole, many being members of ruling party in disguise. Thus in forming the new Association comprising of direct ROs only, we have chosen neither surrender nor antagonism and maintained a neutral stand in helping and fulfilling the objectives and pilot projects of the government vowing for sincere and faithful service to public, creating confidence with government which are supposed to do and steer for basic demand.
It is under this backdrop, on 8th January, 1999, a new Association named “Association of Revenue Officers, West Bengal” was formed. Such formation got tremendous boost when on 23rd May, 1999, a large number of Revenue Officers consisting of members of other Associations joined hands in the form of a convention at the Muslim Institute Hall, Kolkata.
Immediately after the formation of the Association of Revenue Officers, West Bengal (ARO, WB), the new Association had joint movements with the West Bengal Senior Land Reforms Officers’ Association (WBSLROA) who were composed of SRO-II & SRO-I and were only non-political Officers’ Association in the department at that time.
However, there was some drastic development in the service condition in the year 2008 for the LR Officers at the initiative of the two Associations viz. AROWB and WBSLROA. The Scale of ROs has been enhanced to Scale no. – 14 from Scale no. – 12. Previously for the Revenue Officers, entry in the WBCS Executive cadre was counted from the date of joining as SRO-II with minimum eligibility of 6 years service as SRO-II, (i.e. promotional post of RO). This is unlike the joint BDOs and ACROs, whose eligibility of 6 years was counted from the entry point in the service as joint BDOs and ACROs. Thus while promotion of the joint BDOs to WBCS Executive took on an average 10 to 12 years, it took the ROs about 25 to 27 years on an average to get promotion to WBCS Executive.
Due to continuous effort of ARO, WB & WBSLROA, in the year of 2012, the Recruitment Rule of WBCS (Exe) could be modified and 6 years of pre-conditional service tenure for feeder of WBCS (Exe) could be reckoned as RO & SRO-II taken together. This was a remarkable achievement for the entire cadre.
Subsequently on one hand, the tenure of RO reduced and on the other hand the demand interest of the two Associations culminated into a common goal. Under this perspective the unification of two Associations i.e. ARO, WB & WBSLROA was talked about in their respective forum. Ultimately the unification took effect in 5th May, 2012 at Okakura Bhawan through State level convention where the entire Association of ARO, WB merged in WBSLROA to form the new nomenclature naming the Association as “Association of Revenue Officers and Special Revenue Officers, West Bengal.