FIR against Azam Khan, others in Jal Nigam scam

LUCKNOW:The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the UP police probing the Jal Nigam recruitment scam on Wednesday filed an FIR against ninetime Rampur MLA and senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan. The SIT was looking into complaints of anomalies, irregularities and corruption in the recruitment for 1,342 posts in the Jal Nigam under the previous SP government.

Azam has been charged in the FIR with fraud, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence among other sections of Prevention of Corruption Act.He was the state’s urban development minister and ex-officio chairman of the Jal Nigam at that time.
Besides Azam, his officer on special duty (OSD) of the time Syed Afaq Ahmed, then urban development department secretary Shree Prakash Singh, then Jal Nigam managing director Prem Kumar Assudani and then chief engineer Anil Kumar Khare have been named in the FIR among others.
The probe team’s superintendent Bishambhar Shukla said the role of the firm hired to conduct the online exam was also found suspicious and, hence, it has also been named in the FIR. “Officials concerned will be identified during the course of the probe and we will prosecute them,” said Shukla.
Some candidates, who had appeared for the exam and faced the selection committee but were not selected, had moved the Allahabad high court last year, alleging that the answer key was made available only after the selection process got over and that no action was taken on the objections raised by them.
Ordered by the court to probe the complaints, the Jal Nigam board asked the government to decide on the matter, following which the SIT was constituted last year to detect anomalies in recruitments made between November 2016 and February 2017 for different positions in the Jal Nigam. Apart from 122 assistant engineers, 853 junior engineers, 335 clerks and 32 junior clerks had been recruited during that period.
Drive as per rules, Azam had told SIT
The BJP government later terminated the services of 122 Jal Nigam assistant engineers in August 2017. The fate of others recruited then would be decided once the SIT completed the probe.
When Azam was questioned by the SIT on January 22 this year about his role, he had stated that the recruitment drive was conducted according to rules and he was being targeted as the BJP government wanted to tarnish his image.Azam and others have been booked under IPC Sections 201, 409, 420 and 120(B) besides Section 13(1)(D) of Prevention of Corruption Act.