BJP blasts Sukhu govt for dissolving Staff Selection Commission

Shimla: The BJP on Wednesday slammed the Congress government for dissolving the Himachal Pradesh Staff Selection Commission over paper leak cases, saying the decision would further delay recruitment exam results and also adversely affect HPSSC staff.

"The government should have improved the working of the commission but it opted to scrap it," said state BJP president Suresh Kashyap said, calling the decision "unfortunate".

He said that thousands of youths have appeared in recruitment examinations in different departments and they would have to wait longer for the results now.

Former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, under whose regime the Hamirpur-based HPSSC was created, termed its dissolution anti-people in general and anti-youth in particular.

He said his government had set up the commission in 1998 to decentralise and speed up the selection process for class III and IV employees.

While announcing the dissolution of the commission, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had said the ongoing recruitment process from HPSSC has been transferred to Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC), Shimla, till further alternative arrangements are made or a testing agency is constituted, he said while interacting with media persons.

Dhumal added that dissolving the commission would cause inconvenience to candidates. It would take two days for a person to reach Shimla from interior areas of Chamba, Kullu and Lahaul and Spiti districts. Women candidates would suffer the most, he said.

He said the decision would also adversely affect the HPSSC employees too, who would lose their seniority if transferred to other departments.

The state government had on Tuesday dissolved the Himachal Pradesh Staff Selection Commission located at Hamirpur. Its operation was suspended after the Junior Office Assistant JOA (IT) paper was leaked in December last year.

The examination of JOA (IT) scheduled for December 25 was cancelled as the paper leak was unearthed on December 23, 2022 when the vigilance arrested senior assistant of HPSSC Uma Azad with solved question paper and Rs 2.5 lakh in cash.  So far, eight people -- Uma Azad, her sons Nikhil Azad and Nitin Azad, tout Sanjeev and his brother Shashi Pal, and Neeraj, Ajay Sharma, and Tanu Sharma have been arrested in the case.