After Ballia racket, jobs of over 5000 nurses in UP under scanner
LUCKNOW Appointments of over 5,000 nurses posted across UP over the last six years are under the scanner after a recruitment racket in Ballia was exposed recently, leading to an FIR against 15 nurses who had been working on forged appointment letters at different community health centres in the district.
“I have asked the director (nursing) to thoroughly scan documents of these 15 nurses and 1,354 who got jobs in November 2022 in various districts including Ballia,” said director general (medical health), UP, Dr Ratan Pal Singh Suman on Thursday.
HT had on February 24 published a report on the recruitment racket. The probe is likely to incorporate the appointments of over 5,000 government nurses. A total of 5768 nurses were appointed between 2019 and 2025, 2388 in 2019, 2470 in 2022 and 275 in 2023. These three batches are likely to be under the scanner first.
“We will move phase wise, where the latest recruitment will be scanned first. This is in anticipation that the latest batch might have put in maximum effort to dupe the system,” said Dr Ratan Pal Singh Suman.
“If we find anomalies, more batches will be scanned without any limit to the year of recruitment. The nurses recruited were sent for joining in over a dozen districts,” he added.
The recruitment racket surfaced recently after an inspection at a primary health centre (PHC) in November when chief medical officer of Ballia Dr Vijay Pati Dwivedi asked a newly recruited staff nurse – “what is the ratio of ORS to be mixed in water for a patient of dehydration,” which the latter couldn’t answer. The nurse also was not able to answer other related queries, which triggered a broader investigation that revealed fraudulent appointments.
To get the job, 15 candidates including two women, forged documents, signatures of officials and used bogus email IDs replicating those used in the health directorate to dupe staff and convince them that they were genuine. They fraudulently got the job without even appearing in the UP Public Service Commission (UPPSC) selection exam.
The health directorate is scanning the emails sent to Ballia CMO during the recruitment process for mandatory verification.
The Ballia health office staff had sent an email to the office of the director general (medical health), asking for confirmation of the joining letter produced by the candidates. The email was in addition to a clarification sought by post. The reply came via an email that had an extra ‘l’ in the word ‘cell’ in the address.
According to the primary probe, the fraudsters had created an email ID – monitoring celll.dgmh@…. but the spelling of cell in the actual mail was cell, which was spotted by the nursing cell and Ballia CMO.
On Thursday, another revelation was made. “The nursing section uses the email directornursing.cell@…. and not monitoringcell.dgmh@…. this means someone even used the incorrect email and we are probing how this optional email was entertained,” said a senior officer.
Ballia police is investigating the case on the basis of the FIR lodged on February 22 by chief medical officer Dr Vijay Pati Dwivedi.
HOW THE PROBE WILL PROGRESS
* In the first step, documents related to recruitment of 15 nurses in Ballia will be scanned.
* Documents of all 1,354 nurses recruited in 2022 will be cross-checked by the nursing section of the health directorate.
* Documents of all 2,200 nurses recruited in 2019 will also be cross-checked
* If needed, more recruitments will be put under the lens
