PATIALA: The inquiry report on the alleged irregularities in nomination in the medical colleges of Punjab during the 1990-91 sessions is understood to have indicted A.K.Kundra a former secretary of health department.

The Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh had ordered an inquiry into the nominations affair following Newspaper reports on bogus nominations in June.

S.S.Boparai an officer of the Commissioner rank who was appointed the inquiry officer has submitted his report to the Chief Secretary A.S.Chatha sources said.

The chief secretary is examining the report they said Chatha has also received reply which Kundra had submitted in response to the show cause notice served to him for violating the service rules applicable to IAS officers

The show cause notice was issued to Kundra when he contested the state Minister of Health and Family Welfare Lal Singh’s statement regarding his involvement in the scandal.

Lal Singh had held Kundra responsible for making wrong nominations in the medical college alleging that the former health secretary had even approached him to scuttle the inquiry to avoid annoyance of the Governor Surinder Nath who finally cleared the file.

The initial queries made by the minister had revealed that three of the six candidates nominated in the MBBS course had submitted bogus certificates. In one case even the name of a candidate was not mentioned in the final list of nominations and the father’s name was given instead. The candidate had not even passed the 10+2 examination which is the minimum qualification to take the pre-entrance medical test.

In another case the father of a girl was supposedly ‘dead’ being a militant victim but he himself appeared before the minister to seek help for his daughter. The two candidates had submitted certificates of being militancy victims attested by the Deputy Commissioners of Patiala and Bathinda districts.

Kundra in his rejoinder had however pleaded that he never approached the health minister to scuttle the inquiry. He had also claimed that it was he who brought the irregularities to the notice of minister.

Though details of the inquiry report submitted by Boparai was not available immediately it is learnt that Boparai had found substantial evidence to indict Kundra The state government is likely to take further necessary action in this regard within the next few days

Meanwhile the state government recently had circulated a letter to all IAS officers in the state to not go to the Press to contradict any point raised by the ministers who are elected representatives of people.

The leer was a fall-out of the experience with Kundra who even went to the extent of accusing the Minister of Health for distorting the facts related to nominations case

The IAS officers have been asked to strictly observe the Indian service rules and to seek prior permission of the Chief Secretary if they wanted to clarity any point.

Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1992