Retired Karnataka HC judge B Veerappa will conduct the probe in the PSI recruitment scam with a deadline of three months for the inquiry.
One-man judicial commission to probe PSI recruitment scam. (iStock)
A one-man judicial commission to inquire into the police sub-inspector (PSI) recruitment scam has been constituted by the Karnataka government
Retired Karnataka High Court judge B Veerappa will conduct the probe, and the government notification constituting the commission has set a deadline of three months for the inquiry.
The Congress had strongly taken on the then BJP government over alleged irregularities and corruption in the recruitment of 545 PSIs. It was one of its major ammunitions against the saffron party during the campaign for the Assembly polls.
The order constituting the judicial inquiry lists four questions as its terms of reference:
Were rules violated during the process of recruiting 545 PSIs?
What were the violations or illegalities, and at what level were they committed?
Who are the persons that gained undue benefit from the illegalities?
What measures can the government take to hold the PSI recruitment exam as per the rules and in a transparent manner?
The order has also asked the CID and the police’s Recruitment Cell to cooperate with the commission by providing necessary documents and information.
Further, the DG & IGP has been asked to make sure the commission gets an office in Bengaluru with the required facilities and staff.
Following allegations that the results were manipulated for the exam to recruit PSIs, the then government had ordered a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which arrested several officials from the Police Recruitment Cell, including its then chief Additional Director-General of Police Amrit Paul, as also a number of candidates who appeared for the exam.
A BJP leader named Divya Hagaragi, who owns the Jnana Jyothi English School in Kalaburagi, the gunman of a Congress MLA, and an irrigation officer were also arrested in the case.
The government had also annulled the results of the exam and decided to hold a re-exam, which is yet to happen.
On 20 June, the Police Recruitment Cell of the Karnataka State Police Department issued an order debarring 52 candidates who have been named accused in the PSI recruitment scam from future examinations.
The examination for the recruitment of 545 PSIs was held in October 2021. The results were announced in January 2022 and the list of 545 of the 54,287 candidates who cleared the exams was put out.
The exams were carried out at 92 centres in Karnataka.
However, irregularities came to the fore when a social media post revealed that one Veeresh Chandrashekar, a candidate from Kalaburagi who had ranked seventh, has been awarded 121 out of 150 marks even though he had attempted only 21 questions as per the carbon copy of his Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet.
It was then that one of the biggest recruitment scams in the state unfolded, with the CID stepping in to probe the case. The CID probe revealed that lakhs of rupees were given in bribes.
The CID investigations revealed that the candidates used two methods of cheating.
One was that of using Bluetooth and/or other electronic devices, while the other involved insiders from the Recruitment Cell.
The candidates would not answer unfamiliar questions and leave them blank. They later got their hands on the OMR sheets, where they filled in correct answers, police sources told South First.
(With PTI inputs)
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