ASKWB

W.B.S.R. covers guidelines regarding maintaining service book. Consult Appendix No. 7 (Rule 221). Those who don’t have a Service Book ready at hand may read the extract below. Sorry for the lengthy post.

Appendix No. 7 (Rule 221)
Under West Bengal Services Rule, 1971
Points
(37) A service book in such form as the Auditor-General may prescribe must be maintained for every whole time Government employee other than those employed casually on daily wage basis.
(38) The service book shall be maintained in duplicate for each Government employee from the date of his first appointment to Government service. One copy shall be kept in the custody of the Head of the Office in which such Government employee is serving and transferred with him from office to office. In the case of the officers of the West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) and the West Bengal Police Service, the “service records shall, however, be maintained centrally by the Home (Personnel and Administrative Reforms) Department. The other copy will be kept with the Government employee.
(39) Every step in the Government employee’s official life must be recorded in his service book, and each entry must be attested by the head of his office or, if he himself is the head of the office, by his immediate superior. The head of the office must see that all entries are duly made and attested and that the book contains no erasure or overwriting, all corrections being made and properly attested.
At a fixed time early in the year the service books should be taken up for verification by the head of the office or other officer as may be .specially authorised by Government in this behalf who, after satisfying himself that the services of the Government employee concerned are correctly recorded in each service book, should record in it a certificate in the following form over his signature:
“Service verified up to (date) from (the records from which the verification is made)”. The officer in recording the annual certificate of verification should, in the case of any portion of service that cannot be verified from office records, distinctly state that for the excepted periods (naming them) a statement in writing by the Government employee, as well as a record of evidence of his contemporaries, is attached to the book.
The verification of service referred to above should be in respect of all service qualifying for pension whether permanent, provisional, temporary or officiating. Before the establishment pay bills are destroyed, the periods of temporary officers as may be specially authorised by Government in this behalf, from the pay bills concerned and the fact of verification recorded under proper attestation in the service books, and officiating service should be verified by the Heads of Offices or such other officer as may be specially authorised by Government in this behalf. Such officers should also invariably give necessary particulars with a view to enable the Audit Office to decide later on by reference merely to such particulars whether the temporary or officiating service will qualify for pension or not.
When a Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D employee is transferred from one office to another, the Head of the Office or such other officers as may be specially authorised by Government in this behalf under whom he was originally employed, should record in the service book under his signature the result of the verification of service, with reference to pay bills and acquittance rolls, in respect of the whole period during which the officer was employed under him, before forwarding the service book to the office where the services are transferred.
The entries in the copy of the service book which will remain in the personal custody of the Government employee will be made up-to-date at least once a year and also when a Government employee is transferred, under proper attestation by the Head of the Office or by any other officer authorised by the Head, of Office.
Any addition, alteration or overwriting in the entries made in any of the copies of the service book will not be accepted as authentic unless the same is attested by the competent authority.
The service book will be made in Bengali or in Nepali (for the Nepalese speaking Government employees) in addition to English.
(40) For the words “in any entry made across the page of the service book” substitute
by the words “in the relevant column of the service book”.
(41) Personal certificates of character must not unless the head of the department so directs, be entered in a service book, but if a Government employee is reduced to a lower substantive post, the reason of the reduction must be briefly shown in the relevant column.
(42) It shall be the duty of every Head of Office to initiate action to show the service book to Government employees under his administrative control every year and to obtain their signature therein in token of their having inspected the service books. A certificate to the effect that he has done so in respect of the preceding financial year should be submitted by him to his next superior officer by the 15th March of every year.
The Government employees shall, inter alia, ensure before affixing their signature that their service* have been duly verified and certified as such. In the case of a Government employee on Foreign Service, his signature shall be obtained in his service book after the Audit Officer has made, therein necessary entries connected with his foreign service.
(43) When a Group A, Group B, Group C or Group D Government employee is transferred, whether permanently or temporarily, from one office to, another, the necessary entry of the nature of the transfer shall be made in his service book, which, after being duly verified to date and attested by the Head of that Office or such other officer as may be specially authorised by Government in this behalf, shall be transmitted to the Head of the Office to which the Government employee has been transferred who will thenceforward have the book maintained in his office.
(45) If a Government employee is transferred to Foreign Service, the Head of his Office or department must send his service book to such Audit Officer as the Auditor-General may prescribe. The Audit Officer will return it after noting in it, over his signature, the order sanctioning the transfer, the effect of the transfer in regard to leave admissible during foreign service and any other particulars which he may consider to be necessary. On the Government employee’s retransfer to Government service, his service book must again be sent to the Audit Officer who will, then note in it, over his signature all necessary particulars connected with the foreign service. No entry relating to the time spent in foreign service may be attested by any authority other thaw the Audit Officer.
**Note 2- below Rule 9 of W.B.S.R. Part-I states –
Date of birth as finally accepted under this rule shall be recorded in the Service Books/ Records of the Government employee concerned both in words and figures under proper attestation by the competent authority with reference to documentary evidence in support of the same.
Note below Rule 48 of W.B.S.R. Part-I ( as regards Condition for counting service for increment) states –
In each case falling under clause (bb) or under clause (bbb), the appointing authority shall, at the time of sanctioning the leave or as soon thereafter as possible and in any case not later than three months after the return from leave of the Government employee concerned, record a certificate to the effect that the Government employee would have actually continued to officiate in the post but for his proceeding on leave for the period from…….to ……..and that the period of leave will count for increment only to the extent it is covered by the certificate. Relaxation, if any, made to this principle shall, in the case of Government employees belonging to any Group other than Group ‘A’, be recorded in their Service Books under proper attestation with full facts justifying the relaxation.
It is better to keep a Service Book in a thick folder marked as ‘Service File of (employee)’, where the Service Book may be kept inside and other documents related to service records and copies of orders related to the concerned employee may be tagged in the folder.