This is the India of our dreams.
7 Jan 2010, 2138 hrs IST
According to railway sources, Barua, who was appointed as a Traffic Porter in 1978, had stopped reporting for duty since 1980 after which disbursement of his salary had been discontinued. "Baruah is absent from duties for a very long period. His salary slip shows zero but he was still an employee according to the records," said the sources.
Baruah remained in the post of Traffic Porter even after joining the insurgent group later. He had got the railway job under the sports quota in the Tinsukia division in Assam. Since December 2009, North-east Frontier has issued two notices asking Baruah to report to authorities at Tinsukia station in upper Assam, an ULFA stronghold. This followed after Baruah's name appeared on a freshly computerised employees' roll. The new records showed Baruah absent since January 1980, eight months after the birth of ULFA.
"No one has turned up to claim the job. Going by our departmental procedure for dealing with absconding employees, we issued the second notice on December 21, asking him to report within 15 days, failing which his job will be terminated," sources said. The 15-day period was over yesterday and the termination notice was issued by the Assistant Operation Manager of NFR today.
