SRINAGAR: Employees of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) have written a letter to Chairperson Veena Pandita against the decision to hire a retired employee as a consultant, a position they say does not exist in the department.

The letter has been sent a day after the government ordered re-employment of a retired official in JKBOSE without defining any recruitment process he had to go through for the fresh appointment. In the order issued by the Deputy Secretary to the government, Umesh Sharma, a copy of which is with Kashmir Reader, Ghulam Hassan Wani, a retired deputy secretary, was appointed as consultant in JKBOSE for a period of one year. The order has not referred to any recruitment notice which was followed for his appointment.

“It was highly astonishing to learn that a process of re-employment has been introduced in JKBOSE for a post which does not even exist in the organisation, and without any norms governing the appointment. This is unethical and against the spirit of the Board Act,” reads the letter, which is in possession of Kashmir Reader.

“Such a practice will open the gate for favouritism and nepotism and will prove to be a Pandora’s box in the organisation. This initiative will promote partiality and thus this organisation will become a haven for re-employment. These practices need to be discouraged and stopped without a second thought,” the letter says.

“We make a humble appeal that the approval sought by your good self for the re-employment of a retired officer shall not proceed further, so that the prevailing conducive working atmosphere in the organisation is not distributed to benefit an individual,” it added.

What further puts the appointment in question is the silence of the chairperson and the person recruited. Veena Pandita told Kashmir Reader she won’t talk about it. Ghulam Hassan did not respond to repeated calls from this newspaper for the second consecutive day on Friday.

Hassan is said to be just a Class 12 pass. He climbed the hierarchy to become an officer through departmental promotions. A consultant is a person who provides professional or expert advice in a particular field. Would such a person be able to do it is quite in doubt.

Junaid Nabi Bazaz