Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 29 (IANS): In a shocker to the previous Left government, the Kerala Lokayukta Thursday asked the Kerala University to cancel all the appointments made to the assistant grade posts in 2008 as the process then was not transparent.

Issuing the directive, Upa Lokayukta Justice G. Sashidharan said action should be taken against the then vice chancellor M.K. Ramachandran Nair, pro vice chancellor V. Jayaprakash and four University Syndicate members.

During the Left government led by V.S. Achuthanandan of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Congress had raised this issue as a major corruption case and had on numerous occasions disrupted the proceedings of the state assembly.

The case was unearthed by Sujith S. Kurup, the then Kerala University Senate member and Congress student leader, who filed a case with the Upa Lokayukta that large-scale corruption took place in the university appointing friends and relatives of Left supporters.

Even though the selection test for appointments was conducted during the Congress-led government's tenure in 2006, the list of those who had passed the examination was prepared during tne Achuthanadan government's time and appointments were made.

At that time, 160 candidates were posted and the Congress opposition alleged that 60 of them were close to the Left political leaders.

In Thursday's directive, the Lokayukta has asked the Kerala University to cancel the appointments made from the list and conduct a fresh entrance examination.

The Upa Lokayukta in 2008 had asked the officials of the Kerala University to produce the nearly 40,000 answer sheets of the entrance examination but that has not been done so far.

Soon after the controversy broke out in 2008, the varsity cut a sorry figure after its two-member team was sent to a high-security printing press in Uttar Pradesh to find out if the answer sheets were with them after evaluation was conducted.

But they returned empty handed with the news that the answer sheets had already been returned to the university.

Reacting to the latest development, Kurup said that finally the truth has triumphed and it is a blow to the previous Left government which did nothing to unravel the major scam.

"The unfortunate part is that since the entire list stands cancelled, even those who managed to get this job purely on merit stand affected," he added.

In 2008 when the Lokayukta first asked for cancellation of the list, the aggrieved people approached the Kerala High Court and demanded to stay the directive, but the court constituted a committee to go through the case.

The committee also concluded that the appointments were not made in a transparent manner. The court then asked the Lokayukta to go into the case once again.

However, the then vice chancellor Nair said he was certain that the list and the appointments were done in a clean way.

"What has come from the Lokayukta is a directive and we are now waiting to hear from the high court," he said.