Jammu: Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday ordered a high-level probe headed by Chief Secretary into the selection process of the Jammu & Kashmir Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIB) which saw among others appointment of son Sartaj Madni, maternal uncle of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and PDP’s vice-president as an executive officer of the board.
“The inquiry would be held by a committee headed by the Chief Secretary and it has been asked to furnish its report in a short time,” an official spokesman said here.
The order comes days after the ruling PDP come under a barrage of criticism over the appointment of the son of its vice-president as an executive officer in the KVIB.
Syed Aroot Madni, the son of Sartaj Madni, features in the latest selection list of the Board, while the nephew of PDP general secretary and KVIB vice-chairman Peerzada Mansoor Hussain has been placed in the waiting list for the post of assistant executive officer.
The PDP has termed the selection as fair, and Sartaj Madni himself has questioned whether or not the sons of politicians deserved a chance to seek employment and livelihood.
But the opposition National Conference has hit out at the PDP describing the selection as “institutionalization of corruption,” while netizens termed the appointment as “fraudulent” and sought an explanation from the ruling coalition partner.
Amid severe castigation on social networking sites, top bureaucrat Shah Faesal said that the case warranted a police case if allegations of malpractices in the selection process were true.
“If it’s true that the merit list has been rigged,” Faesal, who is the managing director of the J and K Power Development Corporation, wrote on facebook, “then instead of an inquiry there should be an FIR. High time that we take those people to task who push our educated youngsters to the wall and kill their confidence.”
According to his Facebook profile, Aroot is the youth president of the PDP for the Divsar assembly constituency from where his father had lost elections in 2014.
The National Conference lashed out at the Chief Minister, saying the PDP’s “tall rhetoric has fallen flat on its face and this selection list is another proof of PDP’s insidious and nepotistic style of politics”.
“Most of the people figuring in the list are either children of close associates of PDP leaders or have direct patronage from the powers that be. The chief minister is directly culpable for this open loot and plunder she has authorised in the state. The state institutions have been ravaged by the PDP and corruption has been institutionalized by the chief minister and her family members,” Junaid Azim Mattu, the National Conference’s state spokesperson, said.
He demanded an immediate probe into the entire selection process. “Is this why the state government has placed its leaders as VCs of these boards so that they could adjust their children in these institutions? What is the message you are sending out to our youth?” he asked.
