If Vyapam which has already claimed the lives of 45 people linked to the scam has earned the stigma of being the post-Independence’s biggest jobs and money-making scam, Punjab has earned the dubious distinction of ushering in the trend of turning the country’s Public Service Commission into jobs-for-money institution. The ‘credit’ for the state earning the epithet must go to the former Congress chief minister late Harcharan Singh Brar and to Punjab’s five-time Akali chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. The applause for exposing Punjab’s biggest cash-for-jobs scam, after taking over as chief minister in 2002, should however, go to former Congress chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh.

It all began when Brar, who took over as chief minister on August 31, 1995 after the assassination of Beant Singh in a bomb blast outside the main gate of Punjab and Haryana Secretariat, Chandigarh. Brar declared that one of his main agendas was to check corruption. But his action in appointing Ravi Sidhu, correspondent of The Hindu as Chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission contradicted his lofty promise of curbing corruption. The reason? Like feudal era’s landlords, Brar had a great liking for sycophants. Sidhu’s write-ups on Punjab used to be full of praise for Brar.

It was during Sidhu’s tenure as Chairman of Punjab Public Service Commission that the country witnessed the then first biggest money-for-jobs scam. Reports soon started circulating in the corridors of power that under Sidhu, the PPSC would select candidates even for high government posts usually on considerations other than merit.

Sidhu had an intriguing knack of cultivating ruling political bosses and senior bureaucrats. After the Akali Dal had come to power in 1997, Sidhu whose term as PPSC Chairman was to end soon was able to establish close rapport with the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. In 2001, Badal wrote three letters to the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, talked to him on telephone and also met him personally to request him to appoint Ravi Sidhu as a member of the Union Public Service Commission. In his last letter to Vajpayee on December 26, 2001, Badal wrote that “Sidhu’s appointment as member of UPSC would be very much in the interest of the people of Punjab and the border State, particularly at this critical juncture. I hope you will consider my request sympathetically, as it is personally and politically important to me”.

The unprecedented scale on which Sidhu’s money-for-jobs scandal was being operated came to light during Capt. Amarinder Singh-led 2002-2007 Congress government.

After assuming Chief Ministership in 2002 Capt. Amarinder Singh sent a former Chief Secretary to Ravi Sidhu to ask him to resign from the chairmanship of the Punjab Public Service Commission. Sidhu refused. He pulled out a copy of the Indian Constitution from his bookshelf and showing the relevant Article to the Chief Minister’s emissary said that he could be removed from the PPSC’s chairmanship only through impeachment by the Parliament and not under government’s pressure.

The Chief Minister who had been receiving complaints against Ravi Sidhu was annoyed by his “insulting” response to his emissary’s request to resign. He was arrested by the Vigilance Bureau in March 2002 for allegedly accepting an illegal gratification of Rs. five lakhs. When his official residence in Chandigarh was raided, the police had recovered movable and immovable assets worth Rs.25 crore. The amount included Rs.8.15 crore the Bureau recovered from Sidhu’s five Bank lockers. TV viewers will never be able to erase from their memory the images of wads of high denomination currency notes tumbling out of one of his Bank lockers when Vigilance Bureau men opened it. A corruption case was registered against him and he was arrested. It was alleged that Sidhu took huge amounts for selecting candidates for government jobs. He, however, obliged the ruling political bosses by selecting their nominees, many on considerations other than merit.

Sidhu’s innovative cash-for-jobs scheme ushered in a trend among the country’s ruling politicians to get their favourites appointed as members of the state Public Service Commissions.

The enormity of Sidhu’s cash-for-jobs scam can be judged from the June 2013 order of the five-judge full bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which found “the entire selection process (undertaken during the chairmanship of Ravi Sidhu) of the Punjab Civil Service executive branch and allied services in 1998 examination to be vitiated, filled with manipulations and fraud”. Dismissing a bunch of 81 petitions challenging the termination of services of the selected PCS members, the court noted it was the “first case in the history of the Public Service Commission in India where such a huge amount of money has been recovered from the fictitious bank account of (Sidhu)”.

In a case Sidhu was sentenced to six years imprisonment by a Ropar court. On April 7, 2015, Sidhu was also sentenced in a cash-for-job case by Patiala’s additional Sessions judge to seven-year Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) and also fined Rs. one crore. (IPA Service)