Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 12: The recruitment scam relating to 37 illegal/backdoor appointments in J&K Legislative Assembly today took a new turn when the whistleblower Prof S K Bhalla moved an application before the J&K State Vigilance Commission (SVC) seeking appropriate directions to the IGP Vigilance Organization with regard to the referring of the matter to the GAD for obtaining opinion from the Law Department in utter breach of the mandate of the J&K State Vigilance Commission Act, 2011 read with the J&K State Vigilance Commission Rules, 2013.
The State Vigilance Commission headed by Chief Vigilance Commissioner Kuldeep Khoda, after hearing Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed appearing for the petitioner, directed the IGP State Vigilance Organization Jammu to respond to the application.
When this application was taken up for hearing, Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed appearing for Prof S K Bhalla submitted that State Vigilance Commission is a creation of J&K State Vigilance Commission Act, 2011 and was formed on the pattern of Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to supervise the functioning of State Vigilance Organization and to monitor the progress of various FIRs/preliminary enquiries/secret/open verifications and joint surprise checks so that the corrupt are nailed in State of J&K.
He further submitted that Rules 19 to 24 of the J&K State Vigilance Commission Rules, 2013 provide complete mechanism for superintendence over Vigilance Organization and supervision of FIRs/Preliminary Enquiries by the State Vigilance Commission and it is incumbent upon SVO to inform the State Vigilance Commission about the progress in FIRs/ Preliminary Enquiries at various stages for advice/ guidance in order to bring the investigation and inquiries to a logical conclusion.
Advocate Ahmed vociferously argued that the IGP Vigilance informed the State High Court in July 2015 that the preliminary enquiry with regard to 37 appointments have been finalized as per the directions of the State High Court and on December 3, 2015 the High Court granted two weeks time to the IGP to take a final call in the matter.
“Instead of seeking advice/guidance from the Vigilance Commission, the IGP referred the matter to the GAD for obtaining the opinion of the Law Department while taking refuge in Vigilance Manual”, he said, adding “Vigilance Manual lacks statutory flavor and IGP Vigilance bypassed State Vigilance Commission which was the appropriate authority for seeking advice/guidance in the matter”.
He further referred to the judgments of the Apex Court which have held that CBI Manual lacks statutory flavor and cannot bypass the substantive law.
After hearing Advocate S S Ahmed at length, the State Vigilance Commission directed the IGP State Vigilance Organization to respond to the application. Looking into the importance of the issue, the SVC fixed January 25 as next date of hearing for considering the matter again.
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