Guwahati directs Assam govt to reinstate officials involved in cash for jobs scam
The Gauhati High Court directed the Assam government to reinstate 52 of the 57 dismissed civil, police and allied service officials of 2013 and 2014 batch who were involved in the cash for jobs scam in the Combined Competitive Examinations.
A Division Bench, comprising Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Malashri Nandi ordered that the dismissed officials, who had completed the probation period, be reinstated within a period of 50 days.
The Assam government will move the Supreme Court against a Gauhati High Court order.
Corruption of APSC was an election issue in the 2016 assembly and BJP had promised to clean up the corrupt practices of the commission.
The appellants had challenged the earlier judgement passed by a single judge upholding their dismissal from service. The high court also allowed the state government to not assign them any duties for the next 30 days and to conduct any departmental.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had termed the high court order "painful" at a time when the state government was ensuring only merit-based recruitments.
Sarma said, "The judgement by the division bench on the APSC matter is painful and has led to disappointment for us".
He added, "We will definitely appeal before the Supreme Court and will try at the last moment to ensure that no one who had got their job through the wrong way is reinstated," the chief minister added.
The Court of Special Judge at Guwahati in July last year pronounced the verdict for convicts in the APSC cash-for-job scam where the
Assam Public Service Commission
's former chairman, Rakesh Paul, has been awarded 14 years of imprisonment and a Rs. 2 lakh penalty.
Also, former APSC members Basanta Kumar Doley and Samedur Rahman have been sentenced to 10-year jail terms. Furthermore, 29 candidates who paid for jobs to get Agricultural Development Officer (ADO) jobs in 2014 have been awarded 4 years of imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 10,000.
32 people, including the Assam Public Service Commission's former chairman, Rakesh Paul, two of its members, and 29 candidates were convicted by the court on July 22 last year.
Paul, along with the other members and officials of the APSC, were arrested for a cash-for-jobs case related to the Combined Competitive Examinations (CCE) for the recruitment of civil, police and other service officials.
Paul was arrested by Dibrugarh Police in November 2016 and released on bail in March 2023.
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