The Opposition in Himachal Pradesh has accused the government of failure to check the menace of involvement of middle men in transferring government employees, and every day the police are recovering fake demi-official (D.O.) letters from some Congress leaders.
The transfer racket of government employees has taken the proportions of an “industry” because some lower-rung party leaders involved in forgery are having a clear official patronage and backing of the political big wigs, it is alleged.
The police have seized four false D.O. letters out of the 37 missing letters from the Chief Minister’s office. A young Congress worker and former NSUI leader Sanjay Guleria has accepted his involvement in stealing D.O. letter pads from the CM’s office before the police. He was making the fake letters with the help of some middle-rung officers and clerks in the CM’s office and after getting them printed in a local cyber café he used to sell it to government employees. He accepted charging Rs. 50,000 for fresh appointments and Rs. 30,000 for transferring government employees to their choicest places.
The racket came to the fore when Mr. Guleria issued the forged letter to Sanjeev Kumar, a lecturer who was seeking transfer from Rohru to Una. The Education Department officials, sensing the imitation, made a complaint and the racket was exposed.
Mr. Guleria, who allegedly collected over Rs. 3 lakh, had given about seven such D.O. notes in the Education Department alone, the police said.
The woman from Sundernagar in Mandi, who was given the appointment of Assistant Manager in the State-owned Cooperative Bank, had given Rs. 50,000 to the Congress leader. He posed as the PA of a Cabinet Minister in the Virbhadra Singh government, said the police.
The Bank, however, declined its involvement in any such case of giving appointment, but accepted that selections for this post were due within a few days from now.
The police have also arrested Senior Assistant Arjun Gautam, who works in the Chief Minister’s office, for helping Mr. Guleria frame the exact language of the fake notes. An employee of a local cyber café, Surendra Kumar, was also arrested for providing technical inputs and storing the data.
The State Civil Supplies office also spotted two fake D.O. letters, where in one person has been transferred from Jhanduta to Ghumarwin and one from Nauni to Ghumarwin. The Opposition alleged that the government was not checking this scam despite of the directions by the High Court against the ban on transfers on political grounds based on the D.O letters of Ministers and MLAs.
