GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said clean recruitments come with a "political cost".
Addressing a function organised to distribute job letters to 22958 youth in 11 departments, he said he had started the tradition of clean and transparent recruitment in 2011 and since then, he had distributed two lakh appointment letters himself.
"There is no pressure on me for clean recruitments. On the contrary, people around me feel bad if the process is fair," a candid Sarma said.
"A clean and transparent recruitment process comes with a political cost. People in the BJP, who work for me day and night to help me win elections, expect something from me, but I cannot give them anything," he added.
Continuing in the same vein, the CM said he and his party were required to make a lot of sacrifices for clean recruitments although there was no compulsion on him for the same.
"Despite our political losses, we had started the tradition of clean recruitments in 2011 for Assam's future. This is because we are taught the nation is above party," Sarma said.
When thousands of youth get jobs as teachers without having to pay any bribes, the government dreams they will bring changes to the lives of the poor and inspire them to scale greater heights in life, Sarma said. But when they waste their time pestering the government demanding TA, DA, transfer etc, it shatters the dream of the poor, he added.
"I appeal to the newly-recruited teachers to stand by the poor. Others who have got recruited must have had the notion they will get something extra apart from salary. We have to end this tradition," Sarma said.
"For how long will Assam lag behind Gujarat and Karnataka? The CM cannot change the fate of Assam, the government employees can," he said.
Sarma, who donned the CM's mantle on May 10 last year, said the first five months of his tenure was spent fighting the pandemic and people and the opposition parties wondered if the government could fulfil its poll promise of giving jobs to one lakh youth in five years.
He said after taking over as the CM, he had instructed the ministers and the officers across departments to ensure that recruitments were clean so that nobody could raise a question.
He asked those recruited as cops to be sympathetic with the poor but go hard at criminals.
“My driver is a policeman. When I was coming to this venue today, I asked him how he got the job. He said he got it without paying bribes. When I asked him again, he said he had to pay Rs 20,000 on the last day,” Sarma said.
He said after the list at the office of the Director-General of Police (DGP) was ready, the dealing assistant could see it. He then informed the driver telling him that if he does not pay Rs 1 lakh, his name would get deleted, the CM added, that he would share the name with DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta who was present at the programme.
“So, even the typist has to be honest. The officers will have the perception the recruitments were fair but the person who has the list begins doing arithmetic. Some vultures in Assam move around to make money by exploiting the poor,” he added.
"Most of us come from poor and lower middle-class families. If a man driving a car violates traffic rules, the policeman warns him by blowing the whistle but a rickshaw-puller faces the cop's stick for the same offence. This has to change," Sarma said.
Further, he asked the newly-recruited policemen to be content with their salaries and not go for extra money even if asked by their superiors.