Uttarakhand HC issues notice to Centre, state govt over irregularities in appointment of SSC Member

A division bench of Uttarakhand High Court headed by Chief Justice Rajendra Singh Chauhan on Thursday issued notices to the Centre, Uttarakhand government, and Postal Department in connection with forgeries and irregularities conducted in the appointment of Member in Staff Selection Commission.

The bench was hearing the petition of IFS Officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi.

Chaturvedi had applied for the post of Member in Staff Selection Commission, which is the largest recruitment agency in the country in March 2020 on the basis of an open advertisement issued by the Central Government in January 2020. However, as per the petition, the candidature of Chaturvedi was declined by the selection committee on the ground that his application had reached late, that is on May 29, 2021, while the last date was March 23, 2020.

However, the speed post tracking report enclosed with the petition shows that the Uttarakhand government had forwarded the name of Sanjiv Chaturvedi for the said post on March 19, 2020, which was received in the office of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on March 20, 2020.

Also, the date of birth of Chaturvedi was shown to be August 4, 1962, while his actual date of birth is December 21, 1974.

Further, the selection committee, which was then headed by the then-Secretary, DoPT, C Chandramouli, and consisted of establishment officer Srinivas Ramaswamy and additional secretaries namely Sujata Chaturvedi and Lok Ranjan also declined to accept Chaturvedi's post-graduate diploma from Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun, as a post-graduate degree. While the gazette notification issued by the central government in April 1998 clearly declares that an 'IGNFA' Diploma to be treated equivalent to M Sc (Forestry)'.

The petition shows that Ashok Kumar, a 1991 batch officer of Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS), who was finally selected for this post, has not even completed the mandatory cooling-off period of three years. As per the appointment order issued in September 2020, this mandatory cooling-off period requirement was relaxed in his case by DoPT.

The petition also mentions the instructions issued by the DoPT in the year 2013, where it was clearly mentioned that names of only those officers have to be forwarded for deputation who have completed mandatory cooling-off period, and in exceptional cases where this requirement is to be relaxed, detailed justification has to be sent and prior concurrence of DoPT has to be sought, which was not done in this case.

The appointment committee in its meeting held on July 10, 2020, had shortlisted five candidates for interview and finally, the name of Ashok Kumar was approved by the committee of the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

( With inputs from ANI )