J&K govt cancel recruitment lists of FAA, Junior engineers
The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Sunday cancelled the recruitment of finance accounts assistants and junior engineers and recommended a CBI probe into the selection process.
It assured all aspirants that those responsible for alleged discrepancies will not be spared and there won’t be any compromise on merit.
“JKSSB FAAs & JE Civil recruitment has been cancelled and a CBI probe recommended into the selection process,” the Directorate of Information and Public Relations tweeted.
“Fresh recruitment process for FAAs and JE Civil will start soon,” it added.
Finance accounts assistant (FAA) aspirants have been protesting for the last few weeks here against the possible quashing of the merit list over alleged discrepancies.
On referral of the UT government, the JKSSB had notified 1700 vacancies of FAAs, JEs etc. in six particular departments on 16 December 2020.
Around 200,000 candidates submitted application forms for 972 vacancies of FAAs in Accounts and Treasuries Department. After several schedule cancellation, the examination for FAAs was held in March 2022. On 23 April 2022, the JKSSB held a meeting and approved the merit list for 972 posts of FAAs besides 3200 class 4th posts, 91 Junior Statistical Assistants, 144 JEs in PWD and 65 JEs in Jal Shakti Department. Following this meeting, the document verification was also carried out for 133237 candidates figuring in the merit list.
Earlier, the Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha cancelled the selection of police sub-inspector after alleged irregularities in the recruitment process surfaced.
He also ordered a CBI probe into the recruitment process.
Following this, the CBI in the month of August conducted searches at 30 locations following registration of an FIR against 33 persons in connection with alleged irregularities.
According to highly placed authoritative sources, the same high level inquiry which investigated the selection of the 1200 SIs and established fraud in the process is looking into the complaints of irregularities in the tests held for FAAs and JEs. If these sources are to be believed, “massive irregularities” have surfaced in the merit list of the FAAs issued by the JKSSB early this year.
“There appear to be several irregularities in the JE Jal Shakti list but it’s volume is not massive and comparable to the merit list of FAAs. But the investigation is still in progress and it has not been concluded in the last one month”, said a knowledge source.
According to him, the inquiry into the selection of FAAs and JEs (Jal Shakti) was “formally but secretly” assigned to the high level committee which on 10 June 2022 was constituted to probe the allegations of irregularities in the selection of SIs.
Additional Chief Secretary Home Raj Kumar Goyal headed by the both inquires. Principal Secretary General Administration Department (GAD) Manoj Kumar Dwivedi and Law Secretary Achal Sethi were appointed it’s members.
Moreover, the Government has also shifted entire staff of Services Selection Board (SSB) including six Under Secretaries, five Legal Officers and many other senior officials in connection with these recruitment process
The News now has learnt six Gazetted Officers in the rank of Under Secretaries and 77 other officials have been removed from the SSB with immediate effect and posted in different Government departments. The substitutes are being placed at disposal of the SSB.
