Mufti’s axe falls on 63 ‘deadwood’ officials

Several engineers, KAS officers, MD of J&K SRTC shown the door

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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SRINAGAR, Jul 1: Four months after it assumed office, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir has terminated the services of as many as 63 officials who include Managing Director of J&K State Road Transport Corporation, several engineers, KAS officers and around 30 junior officials from different services.

Addressing a news conference here on Wednesday, senior PDP leader and Minister of Higher Education Naeem Akhtar, who also functions as the State government’s authorised spokesperson, said that the 63 officials had been sent on forced retirement on the basis of a performance review by a five-member high level committee headed by Chief Secretary Mohammad Iqbal Khanday.

“Now on, the performance review would be a regular feature”, Mr Akhtar said. He elaborated that Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary Bhat Bhushan Vyas, Principal Secretary Home, Commissioner-Secretary General Administration Department (GAD) Gazzanfer Hussain and Law Secretary Mohammad Ashraf Mir were other members of the committee.

Akhtar said out of the 63 officers and official, whose services have been terminated, 25 involve trap cases by various anti-graft bodies, 11 include cases involving disproportionate assets and 27 are miscellaneous cases.

He said the sacking of these officers and officials involved invoking of the existing clause of J&K Civil Services Rules , as per which the Government had to assess the performance of an officer/official on completion of 48 years of age or 22 years of service.

“By today’s action the Government has just reiterated the essentiality of this clause,” he said and added that performance review of the civil servants would be henceforth a permanent and regular feature in administration and the services of the officers/officials, whose performance was not upto the mark or who had integrity issues, would be dispensed with.

Akhtar said this was a part of the larger process of infusing accountability and transparency in governance. He said the Government was also going to strengthen State Accountability Commission (SAC) to ensure transparency at political levels.

Even as the 63 officials sacked in the first go include around 30 junior officials like Deputy Forester Tariq Irshad Handoo who has lost his job for allegedly accepting the bribe of Rs 500 from a timber dealer in Doodh Ganga Range in Chadoura area several years back, MD J&K SRTC Jagmohan Sigh Tandon, former Deputy Transport Commissioner Bhumesh Sharma, DGM J&K PCC Suresh Kumar Rekhi, Chief Engineer CVPP Ltd Jammu KK Gupta, Executive Engineers Sher Mohammd Khan, Mohammad Shafi Bhat, Ghulam Nabi Dar, Abdul Rashid Shah and Ravi Kumar Sharma besides Medical officer Dr Riyaz Dar, Dr Fayaz Ahmad Banday and Dr Manoj Bhagat, Chief Accounts Officer Mushtaq Ahmad Baba and KAS officers Mohammad Yousuf Bhat (former CEO of Sonmarg Development Authority and Pahalgam Development Authority) and Babu Ram have also been removed from government service.

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