PUNE: Eyebrows are being raised in state government and Congress party circles over the handing of two additional department charges in the state Public Health Department (PHD) to Dr. Yashwant Doiphode, a deputy director of Public Health Services, Pune region.
According to PHD sources, Doiphode, has been given additional charge of joint director of state health services and also of joint director of health services (vector borne diseases) by state Health Minister Dr. Vimla Mundada.
This is first ever that a junior has been given additional charges of department that are superior to his grade. “Such a precedent is mind boggling and smells foul,” a senior official of the PHD in Mumbai told Arab News.
Another official of the PHD alleged that Doiphode has been given these two key charges to accumulate funds for the PHD minister who is from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in view of the forthcoming elections to the state assembly and Parliament.
Senior IAS bureaucrats in the state secretariat are surprised at Doiphode holding three posts simultaneously.
“This is nothing but mockery of the government system, and raises suspicion aiming toward large-scale corruption,” another senior official said.
According to sources, some four other senior PHD officials were also in the fray to grab the two vacant joint directors’ post, and were willing to shell out any amount, but finally it was Doiphode who succeeded in bagging these posts.
Congress party insiders say that such affairs taking place in the important PHD is another blot on the Democratic Front government, and may send a wrong message to the people and damage the credibility of the NCP itself, specially when elections are to take place shortly.
Doiphode has also landed himself in trouble with the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for his links with a politician Asha Buchke in the extortion case filed by city-based nephrologist A.N. Sadre in a kidney scam. Sadre had alleged that Buchke and Doiphode had demanded 10 million Indian rupees and threatened him to implicate him in the scam in 2006.
However, last month, the CID said that Sadre’s extortion story had no proof, but it, however, found Doiphode guilty of misconduct and recommended departmental action against him to the state government.
Doiphode had told the media that though a departmental inquiry had been initiated against him by the PHD, it had later been terminated. How, he did not explain. “I don’t think that the departmental action recommended by the CID will have any legal value,” he said.
Speaking to Arab News, Additional Director General of Police (CID) Shiv Prasad Singh Yadav said that no concrete evidence could be found against Doiphode.
However, evidence did come in the form of his frequent meetings with Buchke, which definitely amounts to misconduct. “Since no case could be made against Doiphode, we recommended to the government to initiate departmental proceedings against him,” he said.
When asked if the CID can reopen and hold a detailed investigation into the kidney scam and against Doiphode, the CID chief said “Yes, certainly, but then we can do this only after getting orders from the state government, the Supreme Court and the high courts and the director general of police. Except for the orders from these three authorities, we cannot carry out any investigations from other sources. However, any individual can approach any of these three authorities, and demand re-investigations by the CID in the kidney scam racket.”
