Assam’s illegally-appointed teachers face sack

Acting swiftly, Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has already issued directives to remove from service about 8,000 of the teachers who were illegally appointed by the previous regime. The Opposition Congress, naturally, is crying hoarse over the government’s attitude.

The Manoharan Committee has termed the illegalities and irregularities in appointments as “cancerous”, adding that this had been made possible mainly due to ineffective supervision on the part of the officers.

“The cancerous growth of illegalities and irregularities committed in the matter of appointments of various categories of school teachers in the primary, middle and secondary schools of the state is due to the complete break-down of moral standards, values (and) ethics, perhaps due to ineffective supervision on the part of the senior officers of the Education Department during the relevant period,” the report has said.

It has also suggested that there was a “very big nexus or unholy alliance” between senior officers and unscrupulous non-officials in the guise of chairpersons and members of sub-divisional advisory boards for elementary education, which had led to such large-scale illegal and irregular appointments.

“Fraud was committed with deliberate mischief to cheat the public in the guise of providing employment opportunities to thousands of unemployed youth in the state,” the report further says.

The report has also recommended initiating criminal proceedings against the “irresponsible and unscrupulous persons” who functioned as directors, additional directors, inspectors, deputy inspectors and district officers during that period,” and were found to have indulged in such “evil practices willfully, deliberately and without fear of authority”.

The issue of illegal appointment of teachers has dogged the AGP ever since it came to power in May, 1996. In fact, it was The Indian Express which first highlighted the issue on September 5, 1993, when the Guwahati High Court had pulled up the then Congress government headed by Hiteswar Saikia, and asked the government to cancel a large number of appointments made by flouting rules and regulations.

Given the situation in Assam where jobs are hardly available in the private sector, successive governments have indulged in appointing people in large numbers in government departments, with the Education Department being the favourite.

While newspaper reports pertaining to that period spoke of allegations of large-scale corruption like payment of bribes to the tune of Rs 50,000 per school post, the Manoharan Committee has not dealt with that aspect of the allegations.

And even as the government has begun dismissing a number of such illegally and irregularly appointed school teachers, the Opposition Congress has alleged that the AGP-led government was taking a vindictive attitude towards those appointed when the Congress was in power.

Interestingly, while the Congress has lambasted the government, Hemaprabha Saikia, a senior Congress legislator and widow of former chief minister Hiteswar Saikia (during whose rule the controversial appointments were made) has demanded politicians involved in the illegal appointments should also be punished.

The report has also given a break-up of the illegal and irregular appointments made by the Congress regime in 1991-96. Accordingly, as many as 4,908 teachers were wrongfully appointed in primary schools, 3,399 in middle schools, 5,000 in middle schools, 1,658 in high schools and 218 in higher secondary schools.