The big fat job racket

The expose has brought to light a key issue. Rampant corruption in appointments in government and public sector undertakings and tampering of list of selected candidates in the absence of a proper mechanism in the PSC to cross-check whether the person joined the service was the actual candidate or not.

Commission chairman K V Salahuddin said the PSC had no role in the racket that took place at the appointment level. He said the PSC selected staff only and did not have a system to oversee their appointments. We have asked the government to empower the PSC with the right to conduct an appointment audit in all departments. It is up the government to make necessary legislation in this regard.

Salahuddin said police verification would not make the system tamper-proof as that practice was meant only to look into the antecedents of the appointed persons.

The Wayanad incident forced the government to reopen cases of fake appointments in several other departments. Several entry-level appointments in police,health and several low-profile departments are under the scanner. Around 40 persons illegally got government jobs in 2003 after a similar job racket in the PSC.

Due to the financial crisis,the government had frozen permanent appointments in several departments. This had given space for departments to make temporary appointments on a daily or monthly basis.

Even in this process,job aspirants in the employment exchanges were sidelined. It is mandatory that temporary vacancies be made from the repertoire of the unemployed registered with the job exchanges.

Many such temporary appointments had been regularised due to political pressure from trade unions. Besides,some departments preferred to keep jobs in the temporary category to facilitate permanent posting at a politically favourable situation.

The Wayanad racket put the CPI,which handles the revenue department,in a spot. A section of CPI leaders led by state leader C N Jayadevan demanded that if party leaders were involved in the fraud,they should be thrown out from all posts.

One of the key accused in the Wayanad scam was a close relative of CPI state leader C R Chandramohan. The government shifted out CPIs trade union leader C R Jose Prakash from a key post in the revenue directorate.

Former Youth Congress state president M Liju said his organisation had constantly highlighted the issue of corruption in appointments.

Liju said creation of supernumerary posts had given freedom to department heads to make their own appointments. This had led to corruption, said Liju.