The government has been waiting after giving a petition for writing off a case related to Assistant recruitment that took place in Kerala University ten years ago.
Usually a government’s moral responsibility is to find out the culprit in a case and ensure that he or she gets maximum punishment under the law. But in this case, the government is trying to close the case even before the paintiff comes to know about it.
In 2008, seven persons, including Kerala University former vice-chancellor M.K. Ramachandran Nair, were chargesheeted in the university assistant recruitment scam case.
The others chargesheeted by the Crime Branch were former pro-vice-chancellor V. Jayaprakash, former syndicate members A.A. Rasheed, B.S. Rajeev, M.P. Russel and K. A. Andrews and former registrar K. A. Hashim.
They were accused of offences including criminal conspiracy, cheating and tampering with evidence. Rasheed, Rajeev and Russel are CPM leaders.
The Lok Ayukta had ordered the Crime Branch probe into the alleged malpractice that took place during 2005-08. The written test for university assistant posts held in 2005 was attended by about 40,000 candidates. The Left-dominated syndicate which assumed office in 2006 initiated steps for the appointment.
A provisional rank list of 2,401 candidates was published and 1,401 among them were called for interview in 2008. A day after the interview, appointment orders were issued to 200 candidates, of which 181 joined service within a couple of days.
After the recruitment became controversial, about 35 candidates left the service citing various reasons.It was alleged that the candidates were handpicked considering political and personal interests.
The 40,000-odd optical mark reader-based answer sheets could not be traced yet even after searches were conducted at the high security printing press in Hyderabad and the university godown. It was suspected that the OMR sheets were destroyed by those involved in the scandal.
It is a shame for Kerala society that those who committed the irregularity are going to go scot free. The government’s justification for its petition is that - "allegations are mere allegations". This was what the Crime Branch has said in the petition.

The government’s stand is that the case will be dismissed due to lack of evidence and therefore it is meaningless to proceed with the case.
The main aim now of the government is to protect those who were involved in the scam but this will send a wrong message to society.
The government has the legal and moral right to bring the culprit in front of the law.
There is no point in the goverment's repeated rhetorics that "the corrupt and the corruption will not be tolerated". Stringent action should also be taken against them.
Party affiliations of a person should not be a licence for anyone to indulge in corruption. The real culprit should be punished. If the investigation had been done properly and effecetively, the police would have got all evidence to trap the culprits.