The Jammu and Kashmir government headed by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Saturday terminated service of Anees-ul-Islam, grandson of late Syed Ali Geelani “in the interests of the state’s security.”
Anees had reportedly managed to get an out-of-turn job as Research Officer in SK International Convention Center (SKICC), a subsidiary wing of the J&K tourism department, when late Geelani was calling for protests and shutdowns in the second half of 2016 following Burhan Wani’s killing.
Around 140 candidates had reportedly applied for the job, selection for which was made by an internal committee of the Tourism department, instead of J&K State Services Board or Public Service Commission, mandatory for the selection process. Anees’s father and Geelani’s son-in-law, Altaf Ahmad Shah alias Altaf Fantoosh is currently lodged in Tihar Jail in an alleged terror funding case.
The termination was made under Article 311(2) (c) of the Constitution under which no inquiry is held and dismissed employees can only approach the high court for relief.
Article 311 was extended to J&K after abrogation of its special status under Article 370 in August 2019. One of its provisions says that retention of a person in public service, if prejudicial to the security of the state, can be terminated without recourse to normal inquiry.
“The Lieutenant Governor is satisfied after considering the facts and circumstances of the case and on the basis of the information available that the activities of Mr. Anees-ul-Islam, Research Officer in Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Centre S/o Altaf Ahmad Shah R/o 119-MIG Green Park, Bemina, Srinagar A/p Bachpora, Srinagar are such as to warrant his dismissal from service,” reads the order.
The dismissal of Anees was greenlit by a committee headed by J&K’s chief secretary Arun Kumar Mehta after the case was referred to it by a ‘Special Task Force’ (STF) chaired by J&K’s intelligence chief which was set up in April this year.
So far on the recommendations of the committee, over two dozen government employees, including two sons of Pakistan-based Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahudin and tainted deputy superintendent of J&K police, Davinder Singh, who was chargesheeted by the NIA for providing support to the Hizbul, have been dismissed from the service.
A senior officer in J&K General Administration Department (GAD) said the termination of employees is an “ongoing process.”
For future appointments, the J&K government has already made the rules stricter wherein anybody joining the service will be subjected to CID verification which will unravel whether the fresh recruits have links in anti-national and anti-social activities.