Facing series of problems due to several litigations in courts related to various service and other matters, Public Works Department (PWD), now hope to get some respite as the Government had finally dispatched a letter to the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) to fill up all the 22 posts of law officers which are now lying vacant in the Department.
``It was almost over a year that the Department is running without a single law officer even when they had sanctioned quota of 22 law officers”, confirmed a senior PWD officer here on Wednesday afternoon. He said that they dispatched several letters to the government reminding them of the problems faced by them in absence of any legal experts in the Department who could help them in taking up the cases pending in different courts and contest on behalf of the Department but got no response from the authorities concerned. He claimed that the strength of 22 law officers in the Department has been sanctioned when they faced very few litigations but now the numbers of cases had raised to several times, the government had shown no interest to equip them with legal experts as all those posts were lying vacant. The officer said that recently the present government had created half a dozen new zones in the Department by creating six new posts of chief engineers so the government should also create half a dozen new posts of law officers also as per the laid criteria.
Meanwhile when contacted on Wednesday, chief engineer (planning and design) in the PWD, AK Sharma, who is looking after the legal cell, claimed that government has informed them that they had written to UPPSC to fill all the 22 posts of law officers. He said that once they will get the entire strength, they will sent 18 of them, one each to one zonal office and remaining four will be attached with the head office here in the State capital to assist them in taking up the legal matters in the courts. Sharma also informed that initially they filled the post on contractual basis to meet their requirement till few years back but now after government’s intervention to deploy regular force, they found themselves hapless to engage any officer on temporary basis. He said that now the posts will be filled through UPPSC.