Under-graduate teachers’ appointment scandal

Imkong Walling 
Dimapur | December 11

Pending for well over eight years, the result of an examination conducted to fill nearly 800 vacant teaching posts in the School Education Department was finally declared on December 8, 2011. It certainly was a great sigh of relief for the candidates who have been waiting since 2003.

To refresh memory, in brief, the school Education department had floated advertisement inviting applications from eligible candidates to fill 791 vacant under-graduate primary school teaching posts back in 2003. Subsequently, the requisite written tests and oral interviews were conducted in 28 centres across the state and completed in March of 2004. According to sources in the know of the affair, some 2719 candidates had sat for the preliminary written tests.

During the wait for the results, allegations of unfair conduct of the examination emerged. The allegation came from candidates who had failed the written tests and who demanded a re-conduct of the interviews. The matter was taken to court. In response, the candidates (said to be around 2500) who had cleared the written tests challenged the allegation by filing a case on the basis that the question of re-conducting the interviews did not arise.

The latter lost the case, but later appealed at the Gauhati High Court in 2006, where the hearing stretched for four years. The ruling finally came in February 2010, whereby the court ruled that the department in concern should re-conduct the interviews, but, on the condition that only those candidates who had cleared the written tests of 2003 on merit should be allowed to seat for the interviews.

It was said that irregularities were detected during the court hearing, wherein it was discovered that 59 candidates from three centres (namely Aboi, Kiphire and Noklak) had passed the written tests on ‘grace mark’, and which the court ruled was unfair.  

The matter did not end there, though. The 59 candidates, who were found to have managed to clear the written tests on ‘grace mark’, moved the Supreme Court. Their case was however, dismissed by the apex court in March 2011.

It was now in the hands of the School Education Department to implement the ruling of the High Court. However, it had to be slapped with two ‘contempt of court’ petitions (one in 2010 and the second in October of this year) from the litigants to finally to put into motion the aforementioned ruling of the High Court.

Now, with the results out, the government is in for more headaches. According to the result sheet put up by the department, 393 out of 600-plus candidates had cleared the exams conducted in the first week of November. Here, it is to be noted that exams are pending in three centres. These three centres were those wherein the High Court detected irregularities during the conduct of written tests back in 2003. The department must call for fresh interviews for these three centres, the court had ruled.

According to insiders, the problem in hand is that the original number of 791 vacant seats is now filled by teachers appointed on an adhoc basis or as a temporary measure. Most of these adhoc teachers have been serving since 2003 with a majority of them ‘regularized’. It has put the department in a ‘no win’ situation wherein, it can neither tell the adhoc teachers to vacate their posts nor deny the newly passed candidates their hard won seats. This, in the backdrop of the candidates, armed with a court ruling in their favour, standing firm that the department in concern finalise the appointment process no later than the beginning of the next academic session, if not earlier.

According to the service rules, it is said that employees appointed on temporary arrangement and who have completed three years of uninterrupted service or without any service gap are eligible to become regular employees.

Further, one thing that is bugging all is in the way the result was declared. The department had come out with a two-line statement informing of the same, while directing the candidates to check their names and roll numbers against the result sheet put up in the Directorate; bypassing the usual norm of making public the details through the  newspapers.