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Uttarakhand urban development transfers 74 officials, CMO puts them on hold
Uttarakhand minister Prem Chand Aggarwal cleared the files before his departure for a week-long ‘study tour’ to Germany
DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s office on Sunday paused the transfer of 74 state government employees cleared by his cabinet colleague Prem Chand Aggarwal. No reasons were cited for putting the transfer order on hold.
“The transfer orders issued by the urban development department have been adjourned with immediate effect till further orders. All 74 employees will continue to perform their duties at their present posting,” said a brief order signed by Anil Kala, under secretary at the CMO.
The order to put the transfers on hold coincided with Prem Chand Aggarwal, the state’s finance and urban development minister, leaving for Germany on a week-long trip to Germany.
Aggarwal, 62, couldn’t be contacted for his comments.
The move comes weeks after a controversy erupted in the hill state over ad hoc appointments of over 70 people by Aggarwal when he was the speaker of the state assembly between March 2017 and March 2022. Aggarwal had then defended the appointments, underlining that he wasn’t the first speaker to exercise discretion in the ad hoc appointments and such selections were made in previous regimes. Congress lawmaker Govind Singh Kunjwal, who was speaker between 2012 and 2017 and is alleged to have appointed 158 people, mostly nominees of Congress leaders, had also justified the appointments.
At chief minister Dhami’s instance, assembly speaker Ritu Khanduri Bhushan set up a three-member committee headed by DK Kotia, former vice chairman of Uttarakhand Public Services Tribunal to look into the appointments made to the assembly secretariat since 2000 when Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh.
There was speculation that Prem Chand Aggarwal was recently summoned by the party leadership over the controversial appointments but the minister had denied media reports in this context.
