PDP sparks backdoor job row; Omar Abdullah’s Government hits back
Sharpening its attack on the issue of ‘back door appointments’ by the Omar Abdullah-led Government, a People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Young Turk, Iltija Mufti, went public on Sunday with a list of companies engaged in a recruitment drive. In response, the Omar Abdullah-led Government swiftly deployed three top guns to clear the air.
Earlier, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Mehbooba Mufti alleged that 25000 ‘backdoor appointments’ have been made by the current dispensation in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In her social media post on X, Iltija Mufti Sunday posed some direct questions to know why hundreds of crores are being spent on outsourcing jobs to private companies. Who selected these companies, and what was the selection process? On what basis are people being recruited without a transparent merit-based process? Will the Government make these contracts and recruitment details public? Reacting to these allegations, Nasir Aslam Wani, Advisor to the Chief Minister, along with two senior Cabinet ministers, Sakina Itoo and Javid Ahmad Dar, on Sunday clarified that the outsourcing system at the centre of the controversy was not of their making, and dared their critics to prove otherwise.
Addressing a hurriedly called Press Conference in Srinagar, Nasir Aslam Wani explained, “Many misconceptions have been spread regarding our Government’s employment policy”. “It is our duty to clear these misunderstandings because it is our responsibility to ensure that the public receives the correct facts.”
Comparing the working of the two successive Governments, Wani claimed, “Today, we are not witnessing the practices that were common in the past — paper leaks, cancelled selection lists, and other irregularities”. “Those experiences belong to the past.” The Omar Abdullah-led Government, he said, had launched a mission to fill nearly 40,000 vacancies through a transparent, merit-based process and expected it to be completed soon.
Specifically on the outsourcing controversy, Wani cornered the previous PDP administration. “Just as they left us with the consequences of the abrogation of Article 370, the loss of statehood, the division of the erstwhile state into three parts,” he said, “they also left behind this outsourcing system.” He added that the entire outsourcing framework had been put in place between 2015 and 2018, and that all appointments now being questioned were initiated before the 2024 elections. “The same process has simply continued.”
Wani then issued a direct challenge to critics: “If anyone can produce even a single piece of evidence proving that this Government has made a backdoor appointment, let them do so.” Referring to the allegations of back-door appointments, Cabinet minister Sakina Itoo sought to explain the operational rationale for outsourcing, describing it as a short-term administrative necessity rather than a recruitment channel.“Outsourced personnel are engaged over and above the sanctioned strength of any department,” she said, offering the example of a hospital that installs an extra X-ray machine but needs a technician immediately.
“Patients cannot be made to wait indefinitely while the formal recruitment process takes place.
“Itoo also clarified the procurement process for outsourcing agencies. “These outsourcing agencies are selected through the Government e-Marketplace portal using a transparent tendering process,” she said, adding that renewals and extensions were merely a continuation of policy inherited from the previous Government.
