HT Impact: CID seeks details of MCG ‘ghost’ employees

In October 2018, the MCG had formed a committee to investigate into the alleged irregularities in the appointment of outsourced staff.

The Haryana Crime Investigation Department (CID) contacted members of a committee formed by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) on Tuesday to seek details about the large number of outsourced workers recruited by the civic body, who are suspected to be proxy employees.

The issue of proxy employees of MCG was raised during multiple House meetings, the last one being on January 17, 2018. (HT File)

The intervention came on the day when Hindustan Times had carried a report on nearly 1,100 outsourced employees, who failed to show up before the committee, thereby raising suspicions regarding the existence of ‘ghost’ employees and proxy appointees.

In October 2018, the MCG had formed a committee to investigate into the alleged irregularities in the appointment of outsourced staff.

Committee members said that they had managed to interview only 600 of the 1,756 outsourced employees, since the past four months and despite repeated reminders, the remaining did not turn up for the interview. This prompted the committee members to alert senior MCG officials of their suspicions of proxy appointments.

“I received multiple calls from CID officials on Tuesday morning asking me for further details of our investigation. We have shared the relevant information with CID officials for their perusal. They informed us that they will also carry out their own independent investigation and look into the appointments of the outsourced employees to ascertain the exact number of ‘ghost’ employees or proxy posts,” said RS Rathee, independent councillor of Ward-34, who heads the Mcg-appointed committee.

“We have taken the relevant information from the committee members and forwarded the same to higher officials in Chandigarh,” said a CID official, privy to the matter.

Despite repeated calls to Anil Kumar Rao, inspector general of CID, he could not be reached for comment.

MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav, on Tuesday, also directed officials from the accounting department to press outsourced employees to get themselves interviewed before the committee and to allocate some of their staff members to them for the interview process.

“We are providing all the resources to the committee to ensure the investigation is completed as soon as possible and there can be further clarity on the issue. Directions were issued to the accounting department officials to assist the committee members for expediting the process,” said MCG commissioner Yashpalyadav.

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