In recent years, the state of Assam has been embroiled under a cash for jobs scam, whose kingpin is alleged to be Rakesh Kumar Paul the chairman of Assam Public Service Commission (APSC). Paul who was appointed to the commission by the Congress in 2008 became its Chairman in 2013.
He was since then accused of running a “jobs bazaar” during the erstwhile Congress regime where he is alleged to have collected Rs 10 lakh to Rs 40 lakh from candidates or a total of Rs 20 crore to Rs 40 crore for manipulating the mark sheet of the said candidates who then got the job.
In March 2015 the complaint in this matter was forwarded to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption wing of Assam Police which forwarded it to the Congress led state government but nothing happened.
Now in what reports have called, the biggest move against corruption by the Sarbananda Sonowal-led BJP government, authorities have arrested 11 officials in connection with this case. These 11 officials who belong to the 2013 batch, were arrested from various districts in the early hours of Wednesday.
Of the 11 arrested, 7 belong to the Assam Civil Services (ACS) and 4 belong to the Assam Police Service (APS). This number is expected to go up, with officials claiming that 14 more are likely to be arrested in the next few days.
These arrests are a result of the investigative team headed by SS Panesar, Additional SP, Dibrugarh, getting forensic reports which confirmed the allegations against these 25 officials who were made to take a handwriting test this June.
As per reports, the answers scripts of these officials had turned out to be fake after forensic examination.
The arrests in this matter began in October 2016 with the arrest of a government engineer who was accused of collecting money on behalf of APSC chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul who was subsequently arrested a month later.
The arrests also include 2 APSC members named Samedur Rahman, Basanta Kumar Doley, 3 APSC officials and 3 Assam Civil Service (ACS) officers who have already been dismissed from service.
The fake answer scripts of the selected officials were seized from the residence of Rakesh Kumar Paul after his arrest. In these fake answer scripts, the marks of the candidate were manipulated. These fake answer scrips were tallied with the handwriting of the selected officials.
Rakesh Kumar Paul as per this report used to arrange a fake exam of the candidates at various secret locations after taking money from them. There the candidates were allowed to write on a fresh answer script so that their obtained marks could be manipulated.
This isn’t the only such action which has been taken in the state.
On Tuesday, Guwahati police arrested Ranjit Gogoi the Director of Information and Public Relations (IPR) in the Assam government in connection with a 30 crore publicity scam which took place towards the end of the Congress regime.
This scam was in connection with the IPR department releasing huge sums of money to private firms for running a publicity campaign called “Vision Assam Mission Assam” which highlighted the “success stories” of the Congress government ahead of the 2016 assembly election.
