SAD-BJP on Friday asked Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Rana KP Singh to “resign immediately on moral grounds” after the state local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu ordered a probe into complaints of a recruitment scam in Nangal Pharmacy College wherein all 44 posts went to the local Congress workers and their wards — all of them allegedly the Speaker’s loyalists and Congress workers.
“You cannot be expected to discharge your duties freely and fairly as long allegations and questions on this scam hang around you,” the SAD-BJP MlAs reminded the Speaker of the high dignity and honour of the office he holds which must remain above suspicion and beyond reproach on probity in public life.
Several SAD-BJP legislators shot off a letter to the Speaker asking him also to recommend a judicial probe into the scam in order to uphold the dignity of his own office.
“Rana KP Singh could not be expected to perform his duties as Speaker in the background of his own name coming under suspicion.
He can resume his duties as Speaker only after he was cleared of all wrong doing by both the department as well as the judicial inquiry,” they said.
Stating that the Speaker also had a responsibility in the management of the Shivalik College of Pharmacy as ex-officio member of the management committee, the SAD-BJP leaders said that many questions remained unanswered and only a detailed judicial inquiry could unearth the magnitude of the fraud.
They asked why the Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University was asked to conduct a test of an institution which is under the jurisdiction of the Punjab Technical University (PTU).