Medical admission row: Puducherry CM, minister must take responsibility, says Lt Guv

Puducherry: A day after Chief Minister V. Narayananasamy raised a veiled criticism against Lt Kiran Bedi on medical admission row, the Lt Governor on Friday led a frontal attack on Narayansamy-led Congress government calling it as a primary failure of the Chief Minister and ministers and the chief secretary.

Backing the government officials, booked by CBI on charges of corruption in the admission of students to post-graduate courses by private medical colleges in the Union Territory, the Chief Minister had attacked Ms Bedi without referring the name, saying that "false complaints and making unsubstantiated allegations with the intent to damage the image of the government."

"It is time for the CM and the minister for health, in particular, to take responsibility for this colossal failure and embarrassment to Puducherry".

Saying that the officers of the rank of secretaries or director will not easily indulge in such mass scale criminality, getting widely reported in media Ms Bedi urged officials to "tell the truth" about whose instructions they were following.

The blunder they committed was that they carried out wrong verbal orders, perhaps nowhere placing them on record.

Which is why they are now responsible and the prime accused in the FIR filed by the CBI, said the former IPS officer.

The Lt Governor had earlier said that from next year the admission process should be more technology-driven to avoid such situations.