Says Ministers wanted induction of blue-eyed in selection lists
Srinagar: The former PHE Minister and Congress leader Sham Lal Sharma on Friday said that the regularisation of more than 61 thousand daily wagers would have been done during the previous regime but some ministers of National Conference acted as a spoilsport in the process.
The present government, which keeps beating the trumpet of taking measures of regularising the daily wagers and need based workers in the state, hasn’t done anything new but only followed the roadmap that was drafted by the previous NC- Congress regime in teh year 2014.
Sharma who was holding the PHE portfolio during Omar Abdullah led coalition in the state, told KNS that he had to resign as a minister in 2014 in protest of the partialities being done in regularising the daily wagers. “Some ministers of NC wanted their own in the selection list. I remained adamant that services of the daily wagers should be confirmed on basis of the merit and no blue-eyed should be given least chances to infiltrate into the final list. I had to resign when turned nasty then,” recalls Sharma.
The senior Congress leader added that the NC ministers were masquerading as ‘Constituency ministers’ when the regularisation was in its final shape. “That thing halted the process; otherwise, it would have been done then only.”
Sham Lal Sharma maintained that even when at present, the government is taking the measures to regularise the daily wagers, it is following the same roadmap that was drafted by the previous regime in the state. “When the government tried to dodge the issue and threatened that it would dis-engage the daily wagers, I came up with the master file of the approval and gave it to the government.
I even told the administration that I will go to court if the daily wagers aren’t regularised as the process has already been completed in 2014.”
The former Congress minister added that it took him more than one and a half years as a minister to compile the list and complete requisite formalities. “I have kept that file with me so that if tomorrow the present government comes up with some lame excuses of delaying the process again, I would produce the records that could pave way for the daily wagers to get absorbed into the government service,” Sharma said.
(With inputs from KNS)
