The scope of investigation includes all 480 appointments made from the formation of the state till the year 2021. The committee may submit the report to Speaker Ritu Khanduri Bhushan after he returns from his constituency Kotdwar.
The issue of 72 ad-hoc appointments made in the Assembly Secretariat last year during the tenure of the Fourth Assembly has gained momentum.
On September 3, the current Speaker Ritu Khanduri Bhushan constituted a three-member expert committee under the chairmanship of retired IAS DK Kotia to investigate the recruitment case. From that day onwards the committee is engaged in the investigation. All the appointments made during the tenure of the interim assembly to the fourth assembly have been taken under the ambit of the investigation.
Testing in two phases in a month
The expert committee has to investigate the matter in two phases and submit its report to the Speaker within a month. In the first phase, 222 appointments made from the year 2012 to 2021 are being checked on the basis of rules and regulations.
In fact, in the year 2011, the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly Secretariat Service Manual came into existence for the appointments in the Vidhan Sabha, which came into force from the year 2012.
During this, 150 appointments were made during the Congress rule and 72 during the BJP rule. In the second phase, a total of 258 appointments made from the interim assembly till 2011 will be tested on the basis of rules. Then the appointments were made according to the rules of Uttar Pradesh.
Appointments made during the tenure of the Speakers of the Legislative Assembly:
Chairman, No. of Appointments
Prakash Pant, 98
Yashpal Arya, 105
Harbansh Kapoor, 55
Govind Singh Kunjwal, 150
Premchand Agarwal, 72
Intensively scrutinizing the papers
The inquiry committee has been continuously scrutinizing the files related to the appointments of the assembly since September 3. Sources said that the committee has scrutinized each and every file after summoning all the files related to the appointment from the Assembly Secretariat.
Along with this, the interim investigation report of the case has also been almost finalized. Now the committee is waiting for Assembly Speaker Ritu Khanduri Bhushan to return to Dehradun. She will participate in various programs in her constituency for the next two days.
