BJP Government ‘Involved’ in Job Scams in Assam

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal once used to roar about the “zero tolerance to corruption” policy of his government. But now his own government has become entangled in job scams. In the latest development, at least two departments— Panchayat & Rural Development (P&RD) and the Information and Public Relation Department (IPR) have been brought to the spotlight following the announcement of results of selected candidates.

Both the departments’ appointments came back to back just before the announcement of dates for the Lok Sabha election 2019. The declarations of the results of the selected candidates of these departments have caused waves of protests across Assam. People are arguing that these appointments are completely bogus and are filled with candidates who are either BJP workers, supporters or are relatives of them. Also, the examinations for the recruitments were full of anomalies.

Let’s first look at the P&RD department’s appointments. The department conducted examination in more than hundred centres across the state. The examination was held for 945 posts where more than one lakh students appeared for the recruitment tests. When the tests were conducted on May 20, 2018, anomalies in large scale surfaced in many of the exam centres. Local media was flooded with the reports of the anomalies.

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Candidates who had appeared in the examination told that the exam halls were full of chaos and there was no apparent control by the authority. Many candidates allegedly could use their mobile phones to contact their friends outside through WhatsApp or text messages to know the answers. After large scale protests, the case was referred to the CID department for an investigation, and meanwhile a PIL in the Gauhati High Court was filed. The court announced a stay order. The CID report said that there were huge anomalies in 18 exam centres in 9 districts.

After almost a year, the final list of selected candidates was declared on March 8. However, again protests erupted across the state. In addition to the questions on the process of selection, the protesting candidates have claimed that the document verification process has also not been carried out properly and the appointment letters were distributed in a hurried manner. Several people including Akhil Gogoi have alleged that candidates related to or close to Naba Doley have got the maximum numbers of selections. Naba Doley is the P&RD minister in the BJP-led government in Assam. An FIR has filed against him at the Dispur police station in Guwahati for the same.

Information and Public Relation Department

The second case has come out in terms of anomalies in the appointments and conduct of examinations in the Information and Public Relation Department, which is headed by none other than Sonowal himself. Exams for various posts in this department were conducted in four phases in 2019—the first one on January 6 and the subsequent ones on January 12, February 3 and March 3. According to the report in the ‘Asomiya Pratidin’, a leading Assamese daily, some 30 thousand candidates appeared in the exam held on March 3. The answer scripts were deposited on the same day by late evening. Surprisingly, the final list of candidates was declared on the next very day. Allegedly this hurried declaration of results was done before the model code of conduct for the general election comes into force. CM Sonowal has ordered enquiries to both the cases.

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Speaking to NewsClick, eminent lawyer of the Gauhati High Court and activist Santanu Borthakur said, “The appointments are utterly questionable. A CBI enquiry is the need of the hour. In the case of the P&RD appointments, the document verification process was not done properly. The documents that were only uploaded in the internet have a fair chance of being fraudulent. Without proper verification of the original documents no one can guarantee a fair selection. The maximum numbers of the selected candidates are those who are close to BJP.”

Talking about the protests against the recruitments, Kashyap Choudhury, president of Students’ Federation of India in Assam, told NewsClick, “We have protested the selection process in the P&RD and the IPR departments. In the joint protest held in Guwahati on March 9, where several organisations like All India Students Association, SFI, and Asom Chatra Yuva Sanmelan, etc. participated, a joint memorandum demanding a CBI enquiry was drafted. What we are witnessing now is one of the biggest job scams ever in Assam. The BJP government who campaigned for zero tolerance to corruption, is now seemingly involved in scams.”

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