Heads likely to roll in Kerala job scam

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM - A woman and her father were arrested in Kerala’s Kollam district Monday for bagging a government job on forged documents, police said, adding that the two were part of a larger racket.

The scandal surfaced after eight people who recently joined various revenue departments in Wayanad district were found to have produced fake joining orders and advice memos of the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC).

The father has disclosed that he paid a hefty sum to an agent and he managed to get jobs for his two sons and a daughter.

“I paid the amount by selling some property and they got the jobs,” he said.

Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran has already asked Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan for a vigilance inquiry into the matter.

Meanwhile, a departmental probe has been launched by the revenue department.

From my initial observations, it has come to light that the normal practice of getting a government job and the formalities involved after getting the job appears to have not been followed. Several files regarding the appointment have disappeared. I will give a full report soon, senior officer K.R. Muraleedharan told reporters in Wayanad.

PSC chairman K.V. Salahudin too demanded a probe.

“At our meeting today, we decided to lodge a complaint with the director general of police because this is a criminal case. We will also ask the government to see that a proper annual auditing is done for all government appointments every year,” he said Monday.

Sources said Abilash, an official of the Wayanad Collectorate and a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), is the key person in the scam.

Abilash is an office bearer of the joint council (of state service organisations) and he has cheated all of us. We demand that a detailed probe into all the appointments that were done in the past few years be taken up for scrutiny, a top official of the joint council said here Monday.

Meanwhile, the Wayand Collectorate saw protests Monday by youth wings of various political parties.

With the scam snowballing into a sensitive affair, Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran, a CPI legislator, said this should not be seen as a tussle with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

This is a social evil and should not be seen as an issue between two political parties. We will leave no stone unturned in the investigations,” he said.

The scam comes in the backdrop of tensions between the two communist parties over certain statements.