Of Tainted Officers

In Assam, this is the season of sackings. In recent years, thanks to the greed and misdeeds of a corrupt former chairman of the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC), we had a large number of totally unsuitable persons recruited to the Assam Civil Service (ACS) and the Assam Police Service (APS). There were some incumbents who had scraped through their HSLC and Higher Secondary examitions in the third division. There were others, expelled from one college, who were again caught copying in their examitions in the college they migrated to. Many of them were able to buy their jobs without having to face any recruitment examitions. And having bought their jobs from a corrupt chairman of the APSC, they were able to put up me-plates with ‘ACS’ after their mes. Thus, the former chairman of the APSC, Rakesh Paul, and the ‘worthies’ that he inducted by selling jobs, did immense disservice to an institution called the Assam Public Service Commission, and discredited it in the eyes of the people. It is in the fitness of things that these officers who had bought their jobs (instead of competing for them in open examitions) should now be hounded by the authorities and imprisoned. As many as 18 such incumbents to the ACS and APS have been taken into custody and produced before courts. The hunt is on to arrest seven others who have remained untraced. They include the relative of a Union Minister of State and the son of a former minister. What is happening is all to the good, because these are necessary steps towards mending a society that had given the appearance of succumbing too readily to the forces of evil and accepting the most reprehensible means of securing jobs for the most undeserving ones of society. No society that has rejected the accepted means of selecting the most deserving persons to man its administrative posts can entertain any hopes of surviving with any dignity.