You are an Under Secretary in a Ministry. Your immediate subordinate, a Section Officer, who was posted there a month back, has started to come late to the office. He has held with him important files for inordinately long durations and has starting disobeying your directions. You have come to know from other officials that he was unhappy with the posting in the present division as there is no public dealing in it. You would

Option (4) is the best course of action as the Section Officer is not discharging his duties and is guilty of insubordination. Trying to counsel may not yield the desired result where the official’s behavior is malafide and intentional. Besides giving the impression of wasting time you may be faulted, as a supervisory authority, for not taking timely action on paper.  Seeking directions in writing from your supervisory officer is only going to delay the obvious course of action, which is, to act according to the rules. Superior authority is not likely to give any different direction than initiating proceedings as per rules. On the contrary, it may be felt that you do not have sufficient administrative acumen to take appropriate action on your own when what is to be done is obvious. Seeking to transfer him is not an appropriate course of action as the Section Officer himself wants to be transferred out. This may solve the problem of the section but not of the organisation. Besides such a step would only encourage him to adopt such tactics in the future also. Principle/Value Tested Desire and ability to take seemingly tough but appropriate administrative decisions.