PANAJI: The state Lokayukta Justice (retd) P K Misra has recommended disciplinary action against two senior government officials – S V Naik and Dattaram Sardessai in view of “serious irregularities” committed by them in the process of recruitment to 31 categories of posts in the Goa Medical College (GMC) in the year 2011.
The government officials – the then director (administration) of GMC S V Naik, and Dattaram Sardessai, who was the joint secretary (health) were both the members of the department selection committee.
The order was passed in June 2017 and forwarded to the Chief Secretary seeking action taken report.
The anti-corruption authority while perusing the vigilance department inquiry report and also the detailed investigation conducted into the irregularities has found “the entire process of selection to be faulty and non-transparent” and “irregularities were mainly due to dereliction of duty shown by four members of the selection committee including the chairperson and the then acting dean, who retired in 2013 and 2014 respectively.”
The matter was referred to the Lokayukta by the state government in the year 2013. But ever since the previous Lokayukta resigned, the matter had remained as such without any further progress until the present Lokayukta assumed office.
“The very fact that about 70 per cent of the selected candidates were from Sattari taluka, which was the constituency of the then health minister, raises grave suspicion that the chairman and members had acted under the influence of some political pressure, however, in the absence of evidence to hold that there was any criminal conspiracy it can be assumed that there was undue pressure exerted by some unseen figure,” the report has stated.
Investigation by the Lokayukta has clearly indicated that “not only the selection was carried out in a great haste but also the selection process for different posts was irregular.”
It was found that the letters sent to the different candidates for attending interview were sent through ordinary post and there was no publication in any newspapers about the dates of interview.
It has been found out that almost 50 percent of the candidates called for the interview for various posts had remained absent and it is quite possible that many of the applicants were unaware of the dates of interview and had therefore not attended the interview.
There were also instances of candidates kept in the waitlist even though no call letters were sent to them and interview marks did not reflect against their names.
“The inquiry report of the inspector of vigilance clearly indicates that the candidates who had attended the interview could have been interviewed only for maximum time of about 2 to 3 minutes keeping in view the fact that the interview of about 20,000 candidates was scheduled to be completed within a short span of time.”
Also the report stated that around 33 candidates were interviewed per hour “which clearly establishes that the interviews were just eye wash. Apart from the above, it is found that each candidate having the minimum required educational qualification was allotted same number of marks not on the basis of any graded system.”
“In other words, though in theory, only 15 marks were allotted for the purpose of interview, the entire selection process was based primarily on marks given in the interview because each candidate was awarded same marks for possessing basic educational qualification,” concludes the report.