BJP questions Akhilesh's statement over police recruitment

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has questioned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's announcement that 35,000 new policemen will be recruited soon in the state.

In a state where for 100 peon posts, more than 23 lakh applications had come, how will the government handle the police recruitment when it has decided to waive off the written exams, state BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak, said on Friday.

"This is yet another attempt by Samajwadi Party (SP) government to fool the unemployed people. It very well knows that such an exam would be a mammoth task which cannot be accomplished," Pathak told IANS.

"With state assembly elections a year away, a discredited government is making a last-ditch effort to generate some good will, but people are smart enough to see it through," Pathak said.

Questioning fairness in the proposed recruitment, the BJP spokesman said, during the last stint of the SP there was a massive scam in the recruitment as a result of which over two dozen Indian Police Service and Provincial Police Service officials were suspended and a probe was ordered.

By doing away with the written exams when the education eligibility of the candidates has been raised from class Xth to class XII, the government was walking into a blind alley, he pointed out.

The recruitments in the last three years have been shrouded with one or the other controversy, Pathak said.

Even the high court had warned the state government over the appointment of chairman of the Public Service Commission and had set it aside.