Arunachal govt terminates illegally appointed CDPOs

Itanagar, Nov 3 (UNI) The Arunachal Pradesh government has terminated 13 Child Development Project Officers (CDPOs), appointed illegally by the state Social Welfare, Women and Child Development department during 2006, official sources said here today.

The state government's move last week came against the backdrop of a court order issued in response to a contempt petition filed by seven candidates against the government.

The concerned department had appointed 13 CDPOs in different districts by ignoring all recruitment rules.

Consequently, the seven youths appealed to the court seeking justice.

The petitioners also filed a contempt of court plea against the state government for not complying with the earlier court verdict last month.

The illegal appointments were executed after the Women and Child Development department, under the Union Human Resource Development Ministry, directed the state government to operationalise 21 Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) projects by June, 2006.

The Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) secretary, in 2006, issued an advertisement for A and B posts including six posts of CDPOs.

However, 13 posts were left out from the purview of the advertisement.

CDPO is a group B post and appointment to such a post can only be made by conducting competitive examinations in terms of the Arunachal Pradesh Combined Competitive Examinations Rules, 2001, with the parameters laid down in CDPO (Grade B Post) Recruitment Rules, 1995.

However, the candidates were appointed clandestinely on ad-hoc basis in complete violation of the rules.

The petitioners had appealed to the larger bench of the court after a single judge bench, despite upholding the contentions of the petitioners and conclusive findings that the appointments were illegal, arbitrarily refused to interfere.

However, when approached, Gauhati High Court held that as all norms were flouted in sanctioning the appointments, the appeal made by the petitioners ought to be heeded and thus passed an interim order in its favour, to cancel all the appointments and advertising the vacancies afresh.

UNI