GUWAHATI, March 13 � The State Education Department continues to stick to its adamant approach showing no interest in issuing prosecution sanctions against the five department officials listed as accused in the multi-crore-rupee teachers� appointment scam even after the deadline of fifteen days set by the Gauhati High Court has passed.
The court, on February 23, had directed the State Government to submit the prosecution sanctions against the remaining five officials to facilitate the probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
The five accused include four former directors of State Elementary Education namely Joy Chandra Goswami, Mohsin Ali, Hementa Kumar Sarma, and Bolendra Kumar Das. Indreswar Bora, former district elementary education officer, is the other accused against whom the prosecution sanction is yet to be issued.
Of the 16 Education Department officials listed by the investigation agency, prosecution sanctions against 11 have been issued.
Sources told The Assam Tribune that such an attitude on the part of the Government is unjustified as it is related to one of the biggest scams in the Education Department.
�One wonders, why the Government is delaying the process even after the Court has reiterated the need for fast-pace probe into the scam,� the sources rued, adding that reluctant approach of the Education Department is also putting the involvement of some of the senior officials in question.
The CID too has moved the department several times in the last one month but to no avail.
The multi-crore-rupee scam which came to the fore in 2007, unearthed siphoning off of several crore rupees from 1989 to 2007 in Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts.
More than 752 teachers were appointed against 35 sanctioned posts in 1989 in the Elementary Education Department.
Though, of the 752 appointments, 717 posts were terminated in 2002, salaries against all those dismissed teachers were being drawn as late as 2007.
