Plea pending against 'tainted' HCS officers for 23 years: Dalal

Former minister Karan Dalal today wrote to the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, urging him to constitute a special Division Bench to adjudicate his petition against the "tainted" Haryana Civil Service (HCS) officers and other matters connected with the case.

In a letter dated July 17, Dalal stated that the officers facing judicial scrutiny of their answer sheets had been provisionally promoted by procuring orders from the high court, while concealing material facts and taking advantage of the non-disposal of his petition, which had been pending since 2002.

“The writ petition is pending adjudication and is fixed for final arguments, whereas the Hon'ble Supreme Court vide order dated March 31, 2011, passed in Civil Appeal No. 2845 of 2011 had already directed this Hon'ble court to decide the matter expeditiously after going through all the pleadings and records of the commission. This Hon'ble court has examined answer sheets of many candidates which substantiate the averments made in the writ petition,” he added.

Dalal and some non-selected candidates had challenged the HCS-2002 batch recruitment in 2002 on the grounds of “various illegalities and irregularities in the recruitment process”.

“It was specifically pleaded that the names of many successful candidates were already disclosed to the media before the result was out... In that selection, the Haryana Public Service Commission completely failed to fulfil its obligations and conspired with the political high-ups of the then ruling regime, and as a result, flouted all norms, resulting in debarring or prohibiting clean and meritorious candidates…,” he added.

He claimed that the tainted officers, who were respondents in the writ petition filed by him and accused in the FIR, had been taking advantage of the judicial process, viz., pendency of the writ petition, as well as obtaining different orders from different Benches by suppressing material facts.