Friday, 16 December 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Speaker Ritu Khanduri terms the decision as victory of justice
Dashing the hopes of the 228 ad-hoc employees terminated from the Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday rejected the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging their removal. The bench of Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Sundersh rejected the petition filed by the counsel of the terminated employees. It upheld the decision of the double bench of the Uttarakhand High Court (HC) in this respect. Reacting to the order of SC, the Speaker Ritu Khanduri said that order is the victory of justice. She said took a decision which was free from prejudice. “It is the victory of the people of Uttarakhand and the unemployed. Earlier also I had said that I would not hesitate to take tough decisions and would even go to the Supreme Court if needed. The report submitted by the Kotia committee has been vindicated,’’ she said
It is pertinent to mention here that on November 24 the double bench of the HC had quashed the stay granted by the single bench on the removal of 228 employees from VS secretariat and had upheld the decision of their removal.
Speaker Kanduri had appointed a three-member committee headed by former bureaucrat DK Kotia to investigate the controversial appointments made in Vidhan Sabha during the tenure of past speakers. In its report the committee found that the appointments were made in gross violation of all norms. It said that no selection committee was set up for making the ad hoc appointments, no advertisement was issued, no competitive examinations were held, the names of eligible candidates were not sought from the employment exchange and no applications were invited.
Acting swiftly on the recommendations of the committee, the Speaker cancelled the appointments of 228 ad -hoc workers on September 23. These ad- hoc appointments were made in the year 2016, 2020 and 2021 when Govind Singh Kunjwal (Congress) and Prem Chand Agarwal were the speakers of Vidhan Sabha. The terminated employees knocked the doors of the court to challenge their removal but with the decision of the SC on Thursday their efforts have received a major setback.
