By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 1 Jun: Deepak Yadav, Chief Engineer Level 1 of PWD, has been granted fresh extension of six months as had been indicated by Garhwal Post earlier. Indications were available about this possibility since several weeks and it turned out to be true when late last night, the Secretary PWD issued an order granting six months extension to Yadav. It may be recalled that Yadav was already serving as the Chief of PWD on extention and his extension was ending yesterday. Yadav has been granted fresh extension despite a strong opposition from several senior Engineers of PWD.
Yesterday itself, Chief Engineer of Irrigation Department, Jaipal Singh was also granted extension. Both these departments are under senior cabinet minister Satpal Maharaj.
Extension to Jaipal Singh has also attracted wide criticism from within the department and also from the Opposition parties.
The extension order issued in respect of Deepak Yadav clearly mentions that the extension granted to him should not be considered to be a precedence in other cases in future but the current government has been granting extension to the heads of various engineering departments and corporations rather generously. It is claimed that many other considerations matter in these appointments besides the eligibility, merit and the performance. Claims of many senior engineers also get ignored despite the fact that they may be having relatively a cleaner service record but they end up retiring without getting chance to head the department despite possessing experience, clean service record and eligibility.
It is also being speculated that Irrigation engineer Subhash Pandey may be appointed as MD BRIDCUL soon in order to appease him after rejecting his claim to be the Irrigation Department head.
