PMO Orders Probe into UPA Job Racket
Published: 16th November 2015 04:31 AM | Last Updated: 16th November 2015 04:31 AM | A+A A-
NEW DELHI: Scandals of the UPA regime, big and small, are tumbling out of abandoned closets. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has ordered a probe into alleged illegal appointments of State and District Coordinators for Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Castes under the chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), Panna Lal Punia, after it received a series of complaints that bribes were given for appointments, which were carried out without prior sanction or intimation to the government as per rules. Punia has been a Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh since 2014.
Sources said 22 appointments made by him came under the PMO scanner in September. Huge sums exchanged hands in lieu of appointments, sources said. The PMO was told that ‘certain coordinators’ flaunted their VVIP status and were allegedly involved in extortion. They were illegally sporting the national emblem on their vehicles, using letterheads with the NCSC office address as their place of functioning and possessing government identity cards to add to their self-created VVIP status.