With the latest dismissal of six government employees by the Jammu Kashmir Administration is the second notable action under the present dispensation headed by the Lt Governor Manoj Sinha. Five government employees were similarly sacked on earlier occasions on the charges of their alleged terror links using the provisions of Article 311(2) (c) of the Constitution. The employees include two sons of proscribed terrorist Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin who is in Pakistan and openly waging a war against India.
Such incidents of government employees’ involvement and supporting the separatists forces in Jammu and Kashmir is not new and nor the government’s action of sacking them. On earlier occasions also, the government had to dismiss a few employees and officers on the allegations of their extending support to secessionism against the state while enjoying all the pay and perks of the same government against whom they had been pursuing the separatist agenda.
It is a known fact that in the last three decades or more, a large number of supporters and sympathisers of separatist elements have entered the Jammu and Kashmir administration and police at different levels. Who have been invariably active or dormant according to situations prevailing in the erstwhile state.
The political leadership especially from Kashmir have promoted such elements for meeting their political ends by brow-beating New Delhi whenever wanted and they remained soft on separatists in and out the government and establishment.
The Special Task Force (STF), the J&K administration constituted for identifying and scrutinizing its employees involved in any activity detrimental to the security of the state or that deemed as anti-national acts.
The Union Territory’s GAD has issued an order constituting STF which has been authorised to identify and scrutinize cases of government employees found involved in such activity and refer these to the government for action against them in terms of provisions of Article 311(2)(c) of the Constitution of India.
Article 311 of the Constitution deals with ‘Dismissal, removal or reduction in rank of persons employed in civil capacities under the Union or a State’.
Under Article 311(2), no civil servant can be “dismissed or removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which he has been informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those charges’’.
Subsection (c) of the provision, however, says this clause shall not apply “where the President or the Governor, as the case may be, is satisfied that in the interest of the security of the State it is not expedient to hold such inquiry”.
The safeguard of an inquiry also does not apply in cases of conviction on a criminal charge [311(2)(a)], or “where the authority…is satisfied that for some reason, to be recorded by that authority in writing, it is not reasonably practicable to hold such inquiry”. [311(2)(b)]
Section 126 of the constitution of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir too, while providing safeguards to civil servants/government employees like in Article 311 of the Indian Constitution, laid down exceptions under which a person could be dismissed without holding an inquiry.
The charges against the sacked staffers range from propagating and promoting the secessionist ideology and their sponsors in Pakistan to passing vital information to militants about movement of security forces, harbouring militants and hawala transactions etc.
Among earlier instances, in 1986, the coalition government of G M Shah’s National Conference (K) and Congress in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, dismissed over a dozen employees from service on charges of challenging the sovereignty of India.
While most of these employees were reinstated by the court, the government action led to the formation of the Muslim United Front in 1987.
In another similar action, former Governor Jagmohan had terminated five government employees, but he withdrew the order following widespread protests by employees.
The PDP-BJP government too terminated the services of nearly a dozen employees in 2016 for participating in anti-national protests and rallies.
While more such dismissals are not ruled, it up to J&K administration how foolproof cases it prepare to get rid of such anti-national element if already penetrated in the government.
