BANANA REPUBLIC OF JAMMU & KASHMIR
IAS officer acts as ‘super Cabinet’, approves 30 contractual appointments
Total disregard to Cabinet decision, Rather’s announcements in Assembly
Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
It was in the Budget Session of 2009 (September) that Minister of Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather, announced Omar Abdullah government’s key decision of regularizing the services of all incumbents, upon completion of seven years of continuous working, who had been engaged on adhoc, contractual and consolidated basis from time to time. Mr Rather mentioned the number of such incumbents as 5656. In the following sessions of Legislature, Mr Rather described the regularization of such employees as “Government’s commitment”.
However, in all of his speeches, Mr Rather made it unambiguously clear that the Cabinet had imposed blanket ban on such kind of engagements/appointments on 9-10-2009 and nobody would be thus engaged in any circumstances. He made it clear that in case any official was involved in such kind of an appointment, Government would not only initiate disciplinary action but also recover the amounts of money paid as salary to such appointees from the delinquent officers.
In immediate follow up to the Cabinet decision, General Administration Department issued Govt Order No: 1423-GAD of 2009 Dated 14-10-2009, specifying the procedure of regularization of such services and also imposing blanket ban on all types of adhoc, contractual and consolidated appointments with immediate effect.
a) all adhoc/consolidated/contractual appointments shall be banned with immediate effect.
The order added: “Any appointment made in violation of above orders shall invite, besides disciplinary action, the recovery of the salary drawn by such an appointee as arrears of land revenue from the officer/officials who made such appointment.
The order made it clear that no individual or authority, other than the cabinet, was authorized to approve or make any adhoc, contractual or consolidated appointment from September 2009 onwards.
Documents in possession of Early Times carry an incontrovertible material evidence that at least one senior IAS officer, who is a Principal Secretary to Government, has approved such appoints in bulk on 16-09-2010, exactly 11 months after the Govt Order was issued by GAD. Subordinate officials of the 1986 batch IAS officer from Himachal Pradesh, including a Secretary and a Deputy Secretary in a board, have subsequently issued so-called “appointment orders” intermittently in the last 10 months, in total disregard to the Cabinet decision and the Government order.
Most of the appointees are retired or retiring officials and engineers of Jammu & Kashmir Projects Construction Corporation (JKPCC). They include retired Executive Engineer Shahid Rasool Qadiri who has been appointed as “Deputy General Manager” vide JKHB Order No: 25 of 2011 Dated 24-02-2011 “on contractual basis initially for two years”.
Jugal Kishore Kapoor has been appointed as Head Draftsman vide JKHB Order No: 108 of 2010 Dated 29-10-2010 “for a period of one year in the first instance”.
Er Mushtaq Ahmad Tarfarosh, Mushtaq Ahmed Sheikh, Mohammad Akram Sheikh and Er Abdul Ahad Wani have been appointed as Assistant Managers vide JKHB Order No: 55 of 2011 Dated 9-4-2011. Interestingly, Mohammad Akram Sheikh has been appointed 20 days in advance of his scheduled date of retirement in JKPCC i.e. 30-4-2011.
Gh Qadir Bhat and Ghulam Jeelani Wani have been appointed as Assistant Managers vide JKHB Order No: 132 of 2010 Dated 13-12-2010. Again, Ghulam Jeelani Wani has been appointed 49 days in advance of his retirement on 31-1-2011.
Subhash Chander Uppal, Joginder Singh Sachdeva, Mirza Khalid Parwaiz, Moti Lal Bagati, O.P. Koul and Mohammad Amin Bhat have been appointed as Assistant Managers vide JKHB Order No: 121 0f 2010 Dated 30-11-2010. Rajan Kapai has been appointed as Assistant Manager vide JKHB Order No: 103 of 2011 Dated 20-05-2011.
All these selectively picked up blue-eyed oldies have been working since their respective dates of joining and their salaries have been fixed according to their last salaries, minus pension, in regular service.
While Minister of Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather, did not respond to phone calls, Commissioner-Secretary Finance, Sudhanshu Pandey, maintained that he could express his opinion only after going through the text of the appointment orders. His “prima facie” observation was that the GAD order was restricted to only Government departments, not the autonomous boards, corporations and societies.
However, officials in GAD held a completely reverse opinion. They pointed out that copies of the Govt Order had been sent to Chairmen and MDs of all autonomous and semi-government undertakings including boards and corporations created by an act of J&K Legislature, for implementation. They further insisted that none of the Secretaries to Government had by law competence in any capacity to approve such adhoc and contractual appointments.
“Had the boards and corporations been exempted, all such undertakings would have made similar contractual appointments in the last two years”, said a middle-ranking official in the state Law Department. He pointed out all Chairmen and MDs had been sending the applicants and aspirants back with the argument that all such appoints stood banned since September 2009.
“All the boards are instrumentalities of the state and the State stands unambiguously interpreted in Article 12 of the Constitution of India. Articles 14 and 16 guarantee right to equality of all citizens in matters of public employment and every action of government and government-created undertakings is governed by the Constitution. High Court of J&K as well as Supreme Court of India have made it clear in various rulings and judgments that no government, or autonomous body created by the government, could appoint incumbents, even on adhoc and contractual arrangement, in an arbitrary manner”, said a senior advocate.
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