Gogoi gives up kids’ cause to uphold ‘rights’ of MLAs

When 37 MLAs of the ruling Congress silently revolted last week, demanding ministerial berths and protesting usurpation of their ‘&#145...

When 37 MLAs of the ruling Congress silently revolted last week, demanding ministerial berths and protesting usurpation of their ‘‘rights’’ due to increasing decentralisation, CM Tarun Gogoi must have thought it would soon take the shape of an Arunachal-type coup if not nipped in the bud.

Thus, while he immediately promised them posts of chairmen of various state PSUs, the CM also acceded to the MLAs’ demand for removal of an IAS officer, who was heading the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan Mission (SSA), a Centrally-funded scheme, so that MLAs got back their ‘‘right’’ to appoint teachers and disburse funds according to their fancy.

A major section of the Congress’s 78 MLAs has been sore over the SSA project for several reasons: it included exclusion of MLAs from selecting teachers and also vested the power of deciding beneficiaries, purchasing equipments and building and repairing schools with panchayats.

Thus this group of MLAs, among other demands, pressed Gogoi for removal of Dhir Jhingran, a senior IAS officer, who was mission director of the project and whom they identified as a major hurdle in exercising their ‘‘rights’’.

Interestingly, the SSA project had emerged as a major showpiece of achievement since the Congress came to power in May 2001, so much so that it received a lot of accolades from various quarters, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who wanted the CM to ensure that the selection of teachers and para-teachers was decentralised to the maximum.

Gogoi indeed had reasons to be proud of the project: it had managed to enroll more than eight lakh out-of-school children in regular schools in less than seven months, bringing down the number of out-of-school children from 13.4 lakh in January 2003 to less than 5.50 lakh in July.

But this hurt a section of the MLAs who discovered that their ‘‘raj’’ had been usurped by the community and panchayats, through the SSA mission.

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The Rs 420 crore Central sanction to SSA added fuel to the fire because this sum appeared to be out of the MLAs’ reach. Under project objectives, it is the panchayat and community which will decide where to build a new school, where to repair an old one and where to appoint a new teacher.

Meanwhile, educationists and intellectuals filed a PIL in the Gauhati High Court, praying for a directive that MLAs would not put ‘‘undue political pressure’’ on the functioning of the SSA.

Those who filed the PIL included former Guwahati University V-C N.K. Choudhury and former Dibrugarh University V-C K.M. Pathak, former Assam Sahitya Sabha president and noted writer Homen Borgohain, and educationists Preeti Barua, Ashraf Ali and Mohammed Taher. Local dailies in Guwahati have also been flooded with news of protests from panchayat members over Jhingan’s removal.