ISLAMABAD At a time when the government is making tall claims of following merit policy in appointments at all government departments, two federal ministers in clear violation of the rules, are out to get their blue-eyed boys appointed to posts from BPS-I to BPS-15 in the Ministry of Textile Industry despite the fact that these favourites do not fulfill the criteria required criterion for the said posts. Federal Minister for Textile Industry Rana Muhammad Farooq Saeed Khan has handed over a list of eight candidates to the officials of his Ministry, while Federal Minister for Communications Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan is supporting a candidate who failed even in the written test examination. However, following the request of the Federal Minister for Communications, officials of the Ministry of Textile Industry issued interview letter to the said candidate just 14 hours before the scheduled time of interview. According to the available record with TheNation, Ministry of Textile Industry advertised 19 posts against the vacant positions of Assistants, Stenographer/Typist, Naib Qasid etc from BPS-1 to BPS-15 to 15 in the national English and Urdu dailies on January 17, 2010 on reserved quotas. These posts included three posts of Assistants (BPS-14), the seats were reserved on quota each for Punjab, Sindh (Urban) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). According to the documents, a total of 179 applications against the three posts of Assistants were received by the Ministry and out of them, 17 applications were rejected by the competent authority on different grounds and 34 candidates were finally short-listed including 14 from Punjab, 06 from KP and 14 from Sindh (Urban). Letters for written tests were dispatched to them. According to the sources in the Ministry of Textile, the authorities have decided that they will call those candidates for interviews who clutched top three positions in written test from each province. According to the marks sheet from KP, one Sajjad Ali S/O Miraj Gul roll no. 06 secured highest 57 out of 75 marks besides two others who clutched second and third positions. At this time, the two federal ministers Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan and Rana Farooq Saeed Khan jumped into the affair and marred the entire procedure of appointments on merit. Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan sent a request letter on his official writing pad whose copy is available with TheNation, asking Federal Minster for Textile Industry Rana Farooq Saeed Khan to favourably consider his nominated candidate Ijaz Anwar S/O Sakhi Marjan for the post of Assistant from KP. According to the written test result, the said Ijaz Anwar had secured 12 out of 75 marks and was thus not among the top three scorers. Following the request of Dr Arbab and upon intervention of Rana Farooq, the Ministry of Textile just 14 hours before the scheduled time of interviews issued interview letter to Ijaz Anwar on May 20. It is worth-mentioning here that interviews for the said post were held on May 21. Rana Farooq also handed over a list, available with TheNation mentioning names of eight candidates who appeared in written tests for different positions, to Section Officer (Admin). That list also includes the name of Ijaz Anwar and it is most likely that these candidates would be selected on political basis rather on merit.