Chandigarh, February 4
In all, they are 11. Their monthly salary bill is in the range of Rs 4 lakh. And that bill is footed by the cash-starved Punjab Government. But what job do they perform for taking the salary?

The 11 are — one Chairman and 10 members of the Punjab Subordinate Services Selection Board (PSSSB). The Chairman is Brig Charanjiv Singh Harika (retd) and Members are Mr Naresh Kataria, Mr N.S. Sahota, Mr Joginder Nath, Mr Harinder Singh Jaurkian, Dr Harbans Kaur, Mr Anil Mehta, Mr Avtar Singh Sidhu, Mr K.S. Sehgal, Mr Kamal Bakshi and Mr Kanwaljit Singh Randhawa.

Except for three, all are politicians associated directly or indirectly with the Congress

About two years ago, Brigadier Harika (retd) and the others were appointed by the Punjab Government with the objective of making recruitments for various government departments. However, since then, they have not recruited a single person for the state government.

For most of days in the week, their Sector 8 offices remain locked. The board’s office functions in building taken on the rent running into lakhs of rupees per annum. “Members come when their meetings are called,” says a board employee. Otherwise, they have no job to perform, he adds.

In this connection, Brigadier Harika (retd), said they can only make recruitments if asked by the government. “There is a procedure to make recruitments. The state Cabinet first approves the posts and then directs the board to make the recruitment. Only the government can decide whether there is any deficiency of employees in any department,” he said.

If there is no recruitment to be made, then what other job they are performing? Replying, Brig Harika said, “We are dealing with 53 court cases. Moreover, I have set the procedure, which perhaps earlier was not in place, for making recruitments.” However, certain other Members said they have “no task to handle as there is a ban on recruitments.”

When told that the government had declared to lift the ban before the Garhshankar and Kapurthala byelections, Members said that they had no intimation yet in this connection.

But what is interesting about the whole story is that the Chairman and the Members of the board were appointed by the government after the imposition of a blanket ban on new recruitment in the state. The decision to impose the ban was taken by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Physical Management of Plan Expenditure on April 24, 2002 and departments were informed by a letter issued on May 13, 2002 in this regard.

Though ban was in place, the government appointed the Chairman in December, 2002 and in April, 2003 some Members were appointed. And the process to appoint Members continued even later.

And the ban on recruitment has not been officially lifted till date, except in one or two departments.

Another interesting aspect is that while on the one hand board Members was appointed, on the other hand, the process was on to identify surplus staff in various departments and put the same in surplus pool headed by an officer of the rank of Administrative Secretary. Surplus staff was to be deployed elsewhere.

Why then were the board Members and Chairman appointed? Obviously, not to make any recruitment but to accommodate them politically or otherwise. The government has enough money to accommodate politicians and other influential retired persons but not to give jobs to unemployed youth, whose number, as per the government assessment, is around 25 lakh, say some Elementary Trained Teachers (ETT), who were bashed by the Patiala police a few days when they attempted to hold demonstration to seek jobs.