Kohima, Oct. 24: The Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) has demanded an immediate probe into the Nagaland Public Service Commission by the CBI, following several alleged scandals in the commission.

Since 2005, there has been a stalemate between the commission and the federation over the alleged scandals. However, the state government was still reluctant to allow the country’s principal investigation team to probe the issue citing several reasons. The NSF accused the state government of trying to shield some of the officials who are allegedly involved with nepotism, bribery and tampering of marks.

Though the vigilance commission was assigned the task of conducting an inquiry, so far no report of the finding has been made public, even though some officials, including the deputy secretary of the public service commission, Achila were implicated.

The scandal surfaced in February 14, 2005, when a staff of the commission attempted to bribe the controller of examination, Legiese, but the commission wanted to hush up the matter as an internal issue. This forced the NSF to start its agitation.

The federation president, V. Pushika Awomi and speaker, W.H. Maring demanded that the CBI be allowed to investigate the scandals to save the public service institution in the interest of Naga students. The two leaders questioned why the controller of examinations was not called as a prime witness of the bribery attempt and why vigilance was obstructed from proper and in-depth investigation into the case.

“Terms of reference limited the vigilance from going further. Thus, the scope of cleansing the premier institution faded,” they said. The federation also questioned the integrity of the commission’s chairman who had tried to defend the controller of examinations and even written to the chief secretary to stop the departmental inquiry against the official.

The student leaders also sought the reason behind commission’s chairman nullifying the vigilance report against the controller of examinations on engaging one Ajitha, a clerk at Alder College, Kohima, to type question papers of the PSC exam in 2004, without sanction of the commission and the government.

The NSF also alleged that an over-aged candidate has been declared as having pas-sed the recent public service commission examination. The candidate’s surname was me-ntioned as Walling when his real surname was Longchar.

The commission had also debarred all advertisements and information to certain newspapers for unearthing the scandals.