Sunday, 23 June 2024 | PNS | DEHADUN
The order of the Uttarakhand High Court in which it has asked the Vidhan Sabha secretariat to submit its reply on backdoor appointments in Vidhan Sabha has opened the Pandora’s box on the shoddy appointments in the Vidhan since the creation of the State in the year 2000. While hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on Friday , the bench of Chief Justice Ritu Bahari and Justice Alok Kumar Verma asked the VS secretariat to file an affidavit mentioning the action taken report on the issue within three weeks. The next hearing on the case will be on July 16. On February 29 this year the HC had directed the VS secretariat to file the ATR on the issue within four months. However it failed to abide by the order and its counsel sought time for the report in the hearing held on June 21 following which the HC directed that the report should be submitted within three weeks.
Congress leader Abhinav Thapar who has filed the PIL, said that the government should submit the ATR demanded by the HC without any delay. He said that the VS secretariat should inform the court about the violation of norms in the appointments in VS from the year 2000 to 2022 and what action it has taken the ministers and officers responsible for backdoor appointments.
In the PIL Thapar has demanded that an inquiry headed by a sitting judge of HC should be ordered in the appointments made in VS from the year 2000 to 2022 and recovery of the public money spent on salaries and expenses should be recovered.
It is worth mentioning here that on September 23, 2022, Vidhan Sabha speaker Ritu Khanduri acting on the recommendation of a committee cancelled the appointment of 228 ad hoc employees recruited in the years 2016, 2020 and 2021. In an affidavit filed by the speaker in court, the Vidhan Sabha secretariat had mentioned that a similar process was adopted in all recruitment of employees from year 2000 to 2021. The PIL filed by Thapar has questioned action only on those appointed after the year 2016 and demanded that similar action on those appointed earlier than 2016 should be taken.
