ATAN’s agitating factor
K. Filip Sumi
Dimapur | April 24
Ever since the government constituted Special Investigation Team (SIT) report of February 26, 2010, the Aggrieved Teachers’ Association (ATAN) has been fighting for its ‘genuine rights’ with all documental proofs demanding retention of service.
After the SIT report was rejected by different teachers’ organisations notably ANAATA and ATAN citing numerous anomalies, the government had till date set up at least four committees to re-verify the case. The Committees are High Powered Committee, Special Verification Committee, Departmental Verification Committee (DVC) and the recent Verification Committee in the district level. The last Verification Committee has already placed its report before the Chief Secretary and the outcome is awaited. Besides the above Committees, Suitability Test was also conducted.
ATAN members have presented themselves to all the above Committees or their documents verified and in the process 84 (purely found bogus) of its members have been terminated. ATAN previously had 1156 members but with 84 of them being terminated, the number has come down to 1072. However, entry into service of almost the remaining ATAN members has been found genuine by the Committees which screened the teachers and their documents. During the process, 336 teachers (not coming under ATAN) from the absentee category have also been terminated.
ATAN banks on the DVC report which was approved by the state Cabinet on March 21, 2011 but yet to be fully implemented by the government. The DVC had recommended eight points for necessary action and the proposal put up to the Cabinet by the School Education Department was subsequently approved. The points are:
1. Final Report on the DVC on the Bogus/Wrongful Appointment of Teachers under the SIT Finding and Recommendation thereof;
(i) Recommendation of DVC for retention for the genuine appointees under various categories may be considered for retention of service.
(ii) Successful 328 candidates against 415 doubtful teachers including 10 genuine teachers categorized by the SIT have appeared for Suitability Test conducted by the Director, School Education may be issued fresh appointment with immediate effect.
(iii) As recommended the total number of 336 Absentee not reported to any Committee may be terminated from the date of last salary drawn by these absentees.
(iv) Absentee Teachers who had reported before the DVC but the documents found doubtful particularly signature of the appointing authority may be given a chance to appear Suitability Test as in the case of other bogus cases.
(v) All 979 remaining cases including doubtful appointees, bogus teachers, show cause notice yet to issue to 100 teachers may also be given a chance to appear in the Suitability Test once for all.
(vi) The remaining 18 cases which are yet to be finalized by the SIT may be also considered on any one of the cases decided by the authority.
The remaining 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 recommendations of the DVC pertaining to approval of opening of new schools, upradation of Elementary Education including post creation of teachers in schools under SSA, RMSA; approval of post upgradations, approval of regularisation of few teachers etc, have all been implemented.
However, except for recommendation number 1 (iii), the rest of the sub-points are yet to be implemented. So, the above five sub-points under recommendation number 1 of the DVC have not been implemented yet. And this is the core demand of the ATAN. So far, the government has not given any reason as to why the remaining recommendations have not been fully implemented even after more than one year of its own cabinet approval for its implementation.
As per ATAN members’ assertion, the government had tried to hoodwink the agitating teachers into thinking that their demand as contained in point number 1 has been fulfilled, by regularizing and converting the appointments of 1560 teachers into the SSA and RMSA schemes on July 15, 2011. But the appointments of ATAN members were not made under such planned Schemes the appointments for which are only contractual and susceptible to cancellation of the appointments.
But when the government came out with this decision regularizing 1560 teachers by reshuffling and transferring them to different areas, it was met with stiff resistance by district tribal students’ bodies and other organisations. These organisations cited linguistic problem and had demanded only local teachers to be posted under their respective jurisdictions and not anyone from other districts. This led to the government keeping in abeyance its decision.
Moreover, even under the 1560 teachers whose services were regularised, serial no. 104 under group no. 215 was skipped. So in total only 1559 posts were regularized. The posts of Hindi and Language teachers were not regularised stating that there was no post creation.
Although it was reported few days back in the local dailies that the Education Department has submitted a proposal to the cabinet to revoke the abeyance order, this is not primarily what the ATAN is demanding. When the abeyance is revoked, further resistance from tribal unions is eminent. ATAN’s core demand therefore is “retention” of their services as per DVC recommendation approved by the Cabinet. Retention means reinstating the teachers in their earlier respective places of posting.
However, the government regularized and reshuffled the postings of teachers which had resulted in tribal student bodies’ opposition. This policy was met with distrust and apprehension about the government’s real intention of solving the issue. This also raised questions as to why the government gave approval to recommendations it was not willing to implement in totality for over a year now.
Had the competent authority implemented the March 21, 2011 Cabinet decision without any dilution and changes, perhaps things could have been different now.
With the screening of teachers by several Committees including conduct of sitting for Suitability Test, all of which cleared the cases of the agitating teachers, NGOs have started stepping into the prolonged issue. The final decision of the cabinet meeting held on April 24, 2012 is yet to be known. SIT might have initially placed many of the teachers under different categories other than “genuine” but the consecutive screenings have rectified where the SIT went wrong and recommendations were given in favour of the aggrieved teachers.
Any further screenings and committees on the issue would mean unending harassment to the aggrieved teachers. So, in the event of the cabinet unable to give final decision and resorting to delay tactics by giving time for re-verification and finalization of reports, then the only saviour for ATAN perhaps could be sticking to nothing less and nothing more than the March 21, 2011 cabinet approval.
This “ATAN’s agitating factor” will be published in a form of series from time to time.
