The Hindu : National : Mulayam warns of serious consequences

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 15, 2007
ePaper

National

National

Mulayam warns of serious consequences

Special Correspondent

LUCKNOW: Describing the dismissal of 6,500 constables and suspension of a dozen IPS officers as illegal, the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh, in whose regime the recruitment was made, warned the Mayawati government of serious consequences. The Samajwadi Party president smelt a rat in the manner in which the inquiry was conducted and action taken.

Mr. Singh said that following the unprecedented action police officers would shy away from taking additional responsibility. He appealed to the dismissed constables not to take any extreme step such as suicide, and hoped that they would get a reprieve from the court. However, the former Chief Minister remained non-committal on the Samajwadi Party taking up their case in court.

“Pre-planned”

The Samajwadi Party chief said the dismissal and suspension spree was pre-planned as directives had been sent to the inquiry committee for recommending the cancellation of the appointments and placing certain IPS officers under suspension. At a press conference here, Mr. Singh, in fact, dubbed the probe panel (headed by ADG, Special Task Force and Inter-State Border Force, Shailaja Kant Mishra), as unconstitutional.

He said the constitution of the panel was in gross violation of the Supreme Court directives that officers who were involved in the selection process could not become members of the inquiry committee.

Mr. Singh said that following reports of irregularities in the selection of PAC recruits, Mr. Mishra, who was then IG, PAC (Eastern Zone), was asked to conduct a probe and submit his report to the PAC headquarters by September 16, 2006. The directives were given by Rameshwar Dayal, the chairman of the recruitment board.

Mr. Singh said that nothing wrong was found in the selection of PAC jawans then.

After about six months of the recruitment, petitions were filed by three MLAs belonging to Lucknow, Sultanpur and Deoria, challenging the selection. These petitions were backdated, had a common text and appeared to have been composed on the same computer, he added.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National