Sunday, 14 JULY 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Taking a serious note of a case involving first issuance and then cancellation of experience certificates to an officer by the National Health Mission (NHM) and Uttarakhand Health System Development Project (UHSDP), the State Information Commission has asked the chief secretary of Uttarakhand to take cognisance of the role of two officers of Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Sonika and R Rajesh Kumar in the matter. In his order, the State Information Commissioner (SIC) Yogesh Bhatt has asked the office of CS of the State to inform the commission about the action taken in the issue. The case involves one Girish Pundir who was issued an experience certificate by NHM on July 30, 2022 after approval from the then mission director Sonika. Later this certificate was cancelled on December 14, 2022 by mission director R Rajesh Kumar. Similarly, another experience certificate was issued by the UHSDP to Pundir on August 25, 2022 and later cancelled on December 16, 2022. Both NHM and USDP mentioned ‘not issued by competent authority’ as the reason for cancellation of the experience certificates.
The matter came up before the SIC Bhatt while he was hearing a complaint filed by Shantanu Bisht. The SIC expressed surprise at the fact that the experience certificate of NHM was issued by its mission director and was later cancelled by another mission director without assigning any clear reason. Bhatt observed that Girish Pundir, to whom the experience certificates were first issued and later cancelled, is now working as AGM (procurement and contract management) in Dehradun Smart City Limited (DSCL) and IAS Sonika is its chief executive officer. He said that cancellation of the experience certificate by a responsible public servant puts a question mark over its issuance. The SIC observed that the episode also shows breach of trust and evidence of working without any control. Interestingly, the complainant Shantanu Bisht submitted a letter to the commission seeking withdrawal of his complaint on which the SIC directed that there is no such provision in the Right to Information Act and the hearing by the commission is a quasi legal process. In his order, Bhatt also directed the Public Information Officer (PIO) of DSCL to present the report of the investigation committee formed by the DSCL on the subject in the next hearing.
