Sunday, 22 January 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
With the State government deciding to seek the opinion of the solicitor general on the appointments made prior to the year 2016 in the secretariat of Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha, the fate of hundreds of employees hangs in balance. In an order to seek legal opinion on the tricky issue of appointments in the Vidhan Sabha, the State government has sought the opinion of solicitor general SN Babulkar. On the basis of his report a course of action on these employees would be made.
To investigate the charges of backdoor appointments in Vidhan Sabha secretariat, speaker Ritu Khanduri had appointed a three-member committee headed by former bureaucrat DK Kotia in the month of September last year. In its report the committee found that the appointments were made in gross violation of all the norms. It said that the appointments were made in individual applications and no selection committee was set up for making them.
Acting on the recommendation of the committee, the speaker on September 23 cancelled the appointment of 228 ad hoc employees recruited in the years 2016, 2020 and 2021. These appointments were made during the tenure of the then speakers Govind Singh Kunjwal and Prem Chand Agarwal. The terminated employees knocked the door of the court to challenge the decision of their termination. However both the Uttarakhand High Court and Supreme Court granted no relief to them. Interestingly the Kotia committee had also found that the appointments prior to 2016 were also made in a similar manner. Since the services of these employees were made permanent during the tenure of Govind Singh Kunjwal, the current speaker Khanduri decided to seek legal opinion in their case. Recently Khanduri wrote a letter to the State government seeking legal opinion on the issue after which the opinion of solicitor general has been sought.
