Corruption racket unearthed in Nashik Civil Hospital

Nashik, Sep 4 (UNI) A major corruption racket in the recruitment of Class IV employees in the Nashik District Civil Hospital has been unearthed.

Advertisement for the recruitment of Ward Boy/Attendants and Peons was published in the newspapers on May 17, 2007. Interviews of selected candidates were conducted on October 17 and 18, and appointment letters were given in November.

Recently, it has come to light that though the advertisement was for recruitment of 56 posts (50 Ward Boys and 6 Peons), 93 people were recruited. Among these, as many as 63 people had produced fake mark sheets and other documents, to meet the criterion of 78 per cent marks in standard IV. These people were serving at various facilities of the hospital and lakhs of Rupees were spent on their salaries since then.

A delegation of Shiv Sena members, led by district chief Datta Gaikwad and metropolitan chief Nilesh Chavan, gave a memorandum to the District Collector regarding this on September 2 demanding cancellation of the recruitment and threatened of agitation in case of failure to do so. The Collector assured them of inquiry and action in the matter.

''A three-member committee will be appointed to inquire into the incident. The members include Motiram Kamble, Asst Director, Malaria, P Dharurkar, Asst Director, Medical and Chief Administrative Officer N M Thakre. Police action will be taken against those found involved in the forgery. Action will also be taken according to the departmental rules against those officials, who showed negligence in this regard,'' D M Vaidya, Deputy Director, Health Services, Nashik said.

One of the recruited candidates, Amol Suryavanshi, nephew of Congress MLA Shobha Bachhav, who had scored 42 per cent marks in class five, but produced a mark sheet with 82.6 per cent marks and got the job. In a letter, the Principal of Shree Chhatrapti Shivaji Vidyalay, Satpur, Nashik, of which Amol was a student, has clearly mentioned that the mark sheet with 82.6 per cent marks, produced by Amol to get the job was a not the real one issued by the school.

Shobha Bachhav said, ''People's representatives were not involved in recruitment in departments such as the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC), Zilla Parishad or the one in District Civil Hospital. Whoever has done such a thing should face action, no matter how close a relative he is. I will raise the question in the Legislative Assembly as well as inform the Chief Minister and the Health Minister about this. Inquiry should be held and compensation for loss of the government money should be deducted from the salaries of these people,'' he added.

District Civil Surgeon, A D Bhalsingh said, ''A merit list based on the available documents was made and the process was implemented.

We demanded the clearance for the documents from the respected schools twice. In seven to eight cases, difference was found in the documents presented by the candidates and sent by the schools. Those candidates were rejected and others were given appointments due to unavailability of documents. They were told that they themselves were responsible for the documents produced. In many cases, the record was not available with the schools.'' ''We will demand information from the concerned schools under the Right to Information Act. Myself and S P Bendre, Chief Administrative Officer will conduct an inquiry. The matter will be handed over to police regarding those, who produced the fake documents,'' Dr Bhalsingh added.

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