By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 3 Apr: In what can be considered to be a setback for the Uttarakhand Government, the Uttarakhand High Court has reportedly rejected the Government’s appeal for it to monitor the STF investigations into the recruitment scams.
According to sources, the High Court has refused consent for monitoring the investigation into six recruitment scams at the Uttarakhand Public Service Commission and Uttarakhand Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UKSSSC).
It may be recalled that the Opposition leaders as well the office bearers of Uttarakhand Berozgar Sangathan had been demanding a CBI inquiry into the recruitment scams. Currently, the scams are being investigated by a Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttarakhand Police. Veteran Congress leader Harish Rawat had also demanded a judicial inquiry into the scams. Following this, the government had announced that a sitting judge of the Uttarakhand High Court would monitor the investigations.
In this connection, last month, the government had sent a letter to the High Court, requesting the Court to nominate a sitting judge to monitor the STF investigations. On 8 February, an official recommendation letter was sent by the Home Department to the High Court Registrar. However, sources have now claimed that the High Court has not given its consent to nominate a judge to monitor the investigation. In this connection, a letter from the High Court has been received by the government through which it has been informed that the court has declined to monitor the investigation.
This comes as a political setback for the government. Sources in the Home Department have claimed that further course of action will now be decided at the level of the Chief Minister.
Sources claimed that one option before the government is to itself nominate a retired HC judge to supervise the investigation, while the other option is to hand over the investigation into the recruitment scams to CBI as is being demanded. One option is to let the investigation being done by the STF continue. At present, the SIT headed by Haridwar SSP is probing Patwari recruitment as well as JE-AE recruitment of State Public Service Commission. While the STF in Dehradun is investigating the UKSSSC conducted VPDO recruitment of 2016, Graduate Level Recruitment 2020 and the Secretariat Guard and Forest Inspector Recruitment.
