CONCERN

What about J&K’s Rajas and Kalmadis?

Govt’s support of silence to corruption may prove worse than a violent summer

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, May 17: That Jammu & Kashmir is enjoying a special (read exceptionally special) status among all Indian states is, in recent times, evident from the fact that the political establishment is unfazed by the trouble A Raja and Suresh Kalmadi have landed in over charges of corruption against them. With everybody from Srinagar to New Delhi being concerned only about the threat of a “hot summer”, corruption, nepotism, favouritism and governance deficits are growing to menacing proportions in the strife-torn state.

Call it irony or paradox but the fact remains that people indulging in corruption, nepotism and favouritism---in both politics as well as bureaucracy---are feeling themselves most secure in Chief Minister’s “Year against Corruption”. Observers, who had expected radical changes in the officialdom with the appointment of a neat and clean Chief Secretary, are now visibly losing faith. Administrative vandalism and anarchy, that had become hallmarks of previous bureaucratic dispensation headed by Sham Singh Kapur, are all intact.

Ironically, in the CM’s “Year against Corruption”, everybody involved in one or the other matter of malpractice---from Srinagar Sex Scandal to Gulmarg Roshi Scandal---has been reinstated and rehabilitated with vengeance. Those fearing arrest and running from pillar to post for getting anticipatory bails in 2009 not only continuing to hold key positions but are now dictating terms to the government. The key accused in Gulmarg Scam, who had been removed temporarily and attached to GAD, was rehabilitated in the thick of Budget session of Legislature in March. He was given prize posting of his choice and the department of a Minister who happens to be the bureaucrat’s close relative.

The impunity and lack of accountability in the bureaucracy reached a level where the state’s Law Secretary found it easy to rope in one of his close friends in the Public Service Commission for the appointment of his own son as an Assistant Legal Remembrancer. Clearly, the scheme was to push a blue-blooded boy on the course where he would become the state’s Law Secretary with the ascendancy of three promotions in the next 12 years. Interviews were held on April 16^th and the results have not been declared in the last 30 days.

This newspaper documented dozens of matters of irregularity and malpractices adopted during selection of gazetted officers in different streams by the PSC. Even the High Court observed how vacancies were being clubbed illegally (so as to pick up favourites from tail-ends of merit lists) and summarily quashed entire selection list of Veterinary Assistant Surgeons. Government did not initiate any action against the officials, let alone Members who claim immunity. Till date, there has been no explanation from the government as to how an IAS officer’s disobedience and contempt to a Cabinet order was being tolerated and why nobody had been appointed as Controller---leading to amalgamation of the posts of Controller and Secretary that is being widely viewed as the result of lobbying by influential politicians and bureaucrats who wanted required marks for their low-merit wards in the personality tests.

It was lucidly documented how an official of Auqaf in Jammu allotted a shop to his own wife, how an Executive Officer of Department of Local Bodies, Kashmir, appointed his own son and how another Executive Officer issued order of appointment in favour of his own wife in the same department---well during Omar Abdullah’s government. One of the accused has been temporarily attached but there has been no action against the officers who have appointed over 2,000 people through backdoor in the same department during the last two years alone. This is in addition to 5,000 backdoor appointees of Mufti and Azad-led governments that the Minister of Urban Development has been complaining of from day one.

Again, during the CM’s “Year against Corruption”, all the senior officers of SKUAST-Jammu have been taken off the hook and given a clean chit by the incumbent Vice Chancellor in a serious matter of embezzlement inspite of the fact that sanction of prosecution of the same officials had been previously issued from the same office.

Making a mockery of the entire system of bureaucracy, there has been no action against an official of Transport Department who was found to have been fraudulently appointed as a junior assistant and meteorically elevated to the position of Deputy Transport Commissioner in a short span of time. There was not even a departmental inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of 50,000 driving licences this particular official had issued, at the rate of over 200 per day, while holding the charge of ARTO Udhampur and Doda. Nobody in the government has been questioned over the dubiously conducted induction of the same official into Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS).

To cap it all, Governor and Chief Minister last week conferred the prestigious State Award on an official against whom CBI has two corruption-related FIRs for investigation in hand. This happened on the day Early Times documented incontrovertible details and everybody in the government was in knowledge of the awardee’s tainted profile. Government did not bother even to issue an ambiguous “clarification” in defence. His Excellency offered smiles and whispered greetings into the ear of the CBI-tainted official, as if rubbishing all media reports.

These are few well-documented examples and perhaps a tip of the iceberg. Treating individuals more important than institutions has been unmistakably the biggest root cause of unrest in Jammu and Kashmir.

(To be continued….)

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