Cuttack, March 23: The state government has started the process to categorise the 274 illegal appointments declared void in the municipal corporation.

Earlier, the government had declared the appointments void, setting the stage for denouement to a 12-year-old job scam.

It acted after a probe found that irregularities in the appointment had been committed during 1996-97 and 1998-99 by appointing 117 persons and 157 persons, respectively, in two phases in the Cuttack Municipal Corporation. The state urban department conducted the probe in January.

'The follow-up action is being taken after receiving the government order on March 19. Process has been started to categorise the illegal appointments declared void, as some were given illegal promotions and some already retired,' municipal commissioner Gyanaranjan Das told The Telegraph today.

'As part of the procedure, steps are being taken to issue showcause notices of termination to avoid legal problems,' he said. The appointments are related to various categories of the posts of sweeper, road gang, drain gang, de-weeding coolies, teacher and so on. There was neither any valid selection nor appointment.

The scandal had surfaced in June 2003 when the civic administration detected that at least 144 employees had been drawing salaries since 1998 without any valid appointment.

In the same year, Pradip Sahu, a city-based journalist, had filed a PIL seeking investigation by an independent agency, preferably the CBI, on the Cuttack Municipal Corporation's illegal appointment scandal.

The PIL had languished till the high court, on April 3 last year, directed the urban department secretary to enquire into all aspects of the alleged scam and give a report about the remedial measures to be taken.

The director of the municipal administration conducted the inquiry on January 22. In an affidavit filed in Orissa High Court, along with the inquiry report, on January 29, urban department secretary Govindarajan Mathivathanan had assured the court to declare the illegal appointments void and that criminal action would be initiated against the errant officers responsible for it with the government approval within 30 days.

Mathivathanan had said government approval would be sought 'for recovery of illegal payments and loss' to the corporation.

'Keeping in view transparency in administration and good governance as well as to assess the exact number of irregular appointments, the issue needs further investigation by a special audit. Hence, the finance department will be requested to conduct a special audit to unearth all left-out cases of illegal appointments which have not been brought out so far,' Mathivathanan had stated in his affidavit.