CM ‘personally involved’ in KVIB ‘scam’, accuses NC

Srinagar, Feb 25: National Conference on Sunday said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her family members were “personally responsible, involved and culpable for not only the recently unearthed KVIB recruitment scam but all such rigged recruitment processes that had paved way for the illegitimate and unfair adjustment of children of PDP legislators and relatives of the Chief Minister in various Government departments and central schemes”.
In a statement, NC State Spokesperson Junaid Azim Mattu said the Chief Minister cannot “shrug responsibility and escape the repercussions of her involvement in these scams by ordering a sham of a probe by her own Administration”.
“No high-level probe by the Chief Minister will suffice. It is she who stands accused of patronizing and facilitating these recruitment scams and widespread nepotism along with her family members and close political aides and nothing short of a court-monitored, judicial probe is acceptable”, he said.
The NC State Spokesperson also questioned the latest theatrical move of PDP Vice President’s son and Mehbooba Mufti’s cousin, Aroot Madni’s withdrawal from the KVIB job offer and said this indicated Madni’s recruitment was highly questionable and wouldn’t have stood the scrutiny of a probe.
“The list is full of PDP-quota applicants who have been finalized after murdering the merit and qualifications of deserving candidates. It also includes the close business associate and partner of a PDP legislator, the son of a PDP sympathizer appointed to a senior post by Mehbooba Mufti and apparently another nephew of a Cabinet Minister. The entire list needs to be probed and quashed to make way for merit and to do justice with those deserving candidates who feel dejected, hopeless and anguished”, the NC State Spokesperson added.
“It has now come to fore the Law Secretary had raised a red-flag and also written a letter to the IG-CID expressing his apprehensions at the sanctity of the recruitment process based on credible information and a direct complaint by the Administrative Secretary Industries and Commerce. Why did the Chief Minister scuttle this red-flag and why did she mount pressure on the administration to allow this scam to go through? Mehbooba Mufti cannot compromise on the integrity of the Chief Minister’s chair to appoint her cousins and the kith and kin of her associates to government jobs. That is unacceptable and shameful”, the NC State Spokesperson said.
“This is just the tip of the ice-berg. More than a thousand appointments on political basis have been made in the J&K Bank including apparently two in the immediate family of PDP Vice President Sartaj Madni and few other children and nephews and nieces of PDP leaders. Similar is the case with various central schemes like ICDS and other Government departments where children of sitting and former PDP legislators have been adjusted directly at the Chief Minister’s insistence and personal intervention over a period of the last three years. Questions also exist about the objectivity of the RMSA recruitment list released by the Education Department recently. All these recruitment processes should be probed through a judicial probe and the proceedings should be monitored by the High Court of J&K. People have lost all faith in the Chief Minister and her Government”, the NC State Spokesperson further said.
The NC State Spokesperson added that the party demands the immediate resignation of the KVIB Chairman so that the probe into the recruitment scam is not scuttled and diluted and said the Chief Minister should take moral responsibility and apologize to thousands of hard-working, education and unemployed youth of the State.