The entire functioning of Punjab Nursing Council has come under the state Vigilance Bureau (VB) scanner for allegedly taking money from the nursing institutes while issuing them recognition certificates for nursing courses.

The VB officials said, it is a first kind of a complaint against quite a different department other than Irrigation, Revenue and Electricity departments.

“Basis on the complaint against the Council we have initiated a preliminary enquiry. We have caught a woman employee of the Council, red handed while she was taking bribe. We have found the revenue, electricity and irrigation officials most corrupt till recently. It is a fist case against the Council,” VB Director G Nageswara Rao, told The Statesman.

The VB’s action has been initiated after the complaint of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sukhminderpal Singh Grewal, who alleged that Council was illegally taking around Rs 35,000 from the institutes running nursing courses.

In his complaint to VB, Grewal stated there are 171 Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM), 217 Bachelor of Science (BSc) in nursing, 85 in Nursing, 69 in Post Basic BioMed Central (BMC) nursing and 27 in SSC nursing courses in Punjab colleges. He stated that the total nursing courses comes to 569  for which the Council was allegedly huge amount for issuing recognition certificates. He alleged the Council do not issue the certificates in case institutes do not pay the amount.

“The emmployees including registrar of the Council deny the institutes, giving them recognition certificates after listing various discrepancies in their documents”, Grewal alleged.

He claimed the booked employee Darshi Devi has the information about the entire matter. He also alleged that Council’ employees under the confidence of Registrar Surjeet Kaur, allegedly charge Rs one Lakh for allotting exam centres in the institutes.

“The exams conducted in recent years at the allotted exam centres should be probed. The authorities of the Council made wrong exam centres after taking bribe of Rs one Lakh per centre”, Grewal alleged.

He also claimed that Darshi Devi had the knowledge that the state’s personnel department had found the Registrar guilty and a disciplinary action was initiated against her in its report submitted on 22 November 2016.

Meanwhile, Council’s Registrar Surjit Kaur told The Statesman that allegation leveled against her baseless. “It is a propaganda against me. I am on extension in the Council. Might be the people making propaganda for want of the position”.