Tuesday, 30 August 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
The old ghost of the appointments of favour has come back to haunt the Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha.
The chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s statement that the State government would request the Speaker Ritu Khanduri to take a decision on the alleged favouritism and irregularities in recruitments in Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha has put the ball in the court of the Speaker on the contentious issue. Her task becomes even more difficult in view of the growing resentment among the unemployed youngsters and utterances of her predecessors in which they have stoically defended their decisions on the recruitments in Vidhan Sabha.
Khanduri who had left India on August 19 to participate in the 65th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference (CPA) in Canada is expected to return to the State in next two to three day and on her return she would find that the old ghost of the appointments of favour has come back to haunt the Vidhan Sabha.
It is pertinent to mention here that both Agarwal and Kunjwal have come under the cloud for making appointments in Vidhan Sabha.
Prem Chand Agarwal who was the speaker during the term of fourth assembly has categorically stated that all the recruitments made by him are as per the rules and said that the Ad -hoc appointments were made due to the shortage of staff in the Vidhan Sabha. A similar line has been adopted by Congress leader and former speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal who said that the article 187 of Constitution gives the Speaker a right to make ad -hoc appointments and he had exercised them. During the term of Agarwal the Vidhan Sabha recruited 72 Ad- hoc employees on different posts in December 2021. The list contains the names of the PROs of ministers, wives of two OSDs of CM and relatives of prominent personalities.
It is worth mentioning here that the Uttarakhand government has imposed a ban on ad- hoc appointments and citing this then finance secretary Amit Singh Negi had refused to release a budget for the new appointments in Vidhan Sabha. Interestingly the salaries of these employees were released on March 30, a day after Prem Chand Agarwal took charge of the finance portfolio.
During the tenure of Kunjwal, 158 appointments were made who were first temporarily appointed through Uttarakhand Purva sainik kalyan Nigam Limited (UPNL). Just ahead of the imposition of Model Code of Conduct (MCC), all these 158 personnel resigned on December 16, 2016 and were inducted into the Vidhan Sabha secretariat.
The Uttarakhand assembly which has only 70 MLAs but it employs more than 550 employees which is said to be the highest among the State assemblies of the country. The State assembly has more employees than the secretariat of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh (UP) that has 405 MLAs. Interestingly the Uttarakhand assembly has only 15 -16 sittings in a year as compared to 60 or more of the other States.
