| HUDD ignores employment boards, announces recruitment of executive officers | | Rules are for fools! | | Javaid Naikoo
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Sept 3: Bypassing all designated recruitment agencies, the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUDD) is all set to recruit executive officers, with the aspiring candidates fearing nepotism.
The HUDD has issued an advertisement notice (1-Hud of 2015, dated 01/09/2015) and announced recruitment of 22 executive officers-13 for Kashmir and 9 for Jammu Municipal Committees.
The notice reads that the selection process comprises academic merit and interview only which includes 40 marks for Graduation with MBA as specialized degree and 20 marks for viva-voce.
Questioning the need for ignoring various recruitment bodies while issuing the advertisement notice, many aspiring candidates said they feared that HUDD wants to adjust the blue-eyed candidates.
The recruitment procedure announced by HUD, they said, is illegal and the State Government had earlier announced that all recruitments shall be made through designated recruitment boards only.
According to sources, there is hardly any Municipal Committee in Kashmir division where executive officers have not been appointed illegally in lieu of money.
According to one credible report, the HUDD authorities have made more than 1,500 illegal appointments till 2011. And the number of illegal appointees is increasing with each passing year.
Besides, almost half of the executive officers were regularized within three to four years after they greased the palms of top officials in the HUDD, said sources.
Notably, after a scam of illegal appointments surfaced in previous National Conference-Congress Government, in May 2013 the State Accountability Commission (SAC) ordered an enquiry into the alleged role of then Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand in the illegal appointments in urban local bodies.
Accordingly, a division bench of the Commission comprising chairman Justice (retd) YP Nargotra and Justice (retd) Hakim Imtiyaz Hussain, directed for a regular enquiry into the allegations of misuse of official position by Tara Chand.
But like in most other cases the inquiry ordered reached nowhere.
In June, 2011Tara Chand himself chaired a meeting to discuss the recruitment scam and in the meeting then Principal Secretary, HUDD, Suresh Kumar asked then Director, Local Bodies, Mohammad Afzal Bhat to attach few executive officers. But again, the order was soon revoked after the intervention of two top politicians who themselves had earlier directed executive officers through their letter pads to recruit their kin.
According to sources, the Vigilance Organization many a time also sought details of employees in the Municipal Committees of Shopian, Pulwama, Anantnag, Kunzer, Ganderbal, Baramulla, Sopore, Tangmarg, Uri and Handwara.
Probe orders were issued, but no concrete actions was ever taken against officials and people involved.
Meanwhile, despite repeated attempts, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh was not available for his comments. |
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