J&K Assembly Speaker serves notice to VK Singh

Former Army Chief Gen VK Singh has been served with notice by Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Speaker Mubarak Gul asking him to explain his position on his allegations of pay-off to a minister in state.

Gurgaon: Former Army Chief Gen VK Singh has been served with a notice by Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Speaker Mubarak Gul asking him to explain his position on his allegations of pay-off to a minister in the state. The notice was served at his residence here by officials of Jammu and Kashmir government this weekend, official sources said today.

They said the notice was handed over to a domestic help as neither Singh nor any of his family members was present at that time. The Speaker`s office had on October 24 issued a notice to Singh. "...He (Singh) has been asked to explain his position regarding certain revelations made by him during the course of an interview to a Delhi-based news channel on September 23," an official spokesman had said. The notice was issued in response to a privilege motion moved against Singh by 15 ministers and MLAs and the former army chief has been given 20 days to explain his position in the matter so that further course of action could be decided under the rules of procedure and conduct of business in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. Singh did not reply to the message sent on his mobile phone asking for his comments. He had alleged that money had been paid to politicians in Jammu and Kashmir for several years. His comment came while he was responding to an expose by an English daily that had claimed that Technical Services Division, an intelligence unit of the Army created during his tenure, had paid Rs 1.19 crore to state minister Ghulam Hassan Mir allegedly to destabilise the Omar Abdullah government in 2010. The statement of Singh was severely criticised by politicians after which National Conference ministers and MLAs moved a motion against him for alleging that some ministers in Jammu and Kashmir were paid money to get certain jobs done since Independence. Mir had denied any wrong doing and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah wrote a letter on September 25 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking a credible probe into the allegation for restoring faith of people in mainstream politicians in the state.