Govt. now regularizing backdoor appointees: ACAUT

The Against Corruption & Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) has lashed out at the government for regularizing backdoor appointees as recently as August 11, 2016. The organization issued a press release on Thursday stating that an office memorandum issued on the 11^th allowed the departments to regularize ‘backdoor’ appointees who had completed three years. 

The anti-graft platform has denounced the government’s action as ‘treachery’ and contempt of the court’s order banning regularization. It called the cabinet’s action “mischief” and accused the chief secretary of ‘speaking with forked tongue.’

“The latest office memorandum issued by the government on 11th August 2016 allowing the departments to regularize all backdoor appointees who have completed 3 years is discriminatory and nothing short of treachery toward the people and vile contempt of court order,” the organization stated.  

“This OM (office memorandum) resolutely violates Atouzo Vs state of Nagaland judgment banning regularization by the cabinet, thus, making amply clear that the state government has no respect for the judiciary and merit-based selection.”

The ACAUT stated: “As explained in previous press releases, the 6/6/16 OM banning backdoor appointments overrides the OM 2008 which had allowed the Cabinet to regularize backdoor appointments; and this 6/6/16 OM was the basis on which the honourable high court had banned all backdoor appointments in the state, henceforth. Therefore, the cabinet had no business to notify a new OM, the 11/8/16 OM, which is a verbatim production of the 2008 OM which had already been made redundant and void.”

The cabinet has not only violated the high court’s judgment as passed on August 5, 2016 “but is an unprecedented backstabbing of the judiciary,” the ACAUT stated.

The organization lamented that the cabinet had “in one stroke” issued “a most discriminatory and treacherous piece of executive order which has all but diluted the reservation quota as well.”

This, the ACAUT warned, “will most certainly create further social disparity between the haves and have nots and feelings of marginalization bordering on tribalism.”

If the cabinet had anyi respect for the high court’s judgment, “Tens of thousands of contract posts would have lapsed and these freed up posts could have been filled up by a selection process based on merit, including conduct of exams by the NPSC as per the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution under Article 14 and 15.”

Further, the eastern Naga tribes could have availed this job opportunity by way of 25% reservation on all the freed posts which the backdoor system had prevented, the ACAUT reminded. “The latest OM makes a mockery of the reservation quota, for the glaring truth is that there is no backward quota in backdoor appointments. It will be interesting to see how much percentage of eastern tribes will be accommodated by the cabinet in all the regularizations, starting with the 19 doctors which the H&FW department is absolutely bent on regularizing.”

Despite the 25% reservation quota being in place since 1977, the organization said, the “sad reality” is that eastern tribes comprise less than 10% of the total state government employees while their actual number should be more than 35,000, that is, 25%, out of the total 140,000 employees. The office memorandum will continue to ‘perpetuate this deception at the cost of the eastern tribes,’ the press release stated.  

‘You created this mess’

One humanitarian aspects of “the backdoor issue,” such as the uncertain fate of the overage employees on contract, the organization stated that the “utter mess is the sole creation of the state government.”

It is for the government to rectify it, if necessary, whereby an arrangement for age-relaxation may be considered for over-age contract employees to appear for NPSC examinations on those lapsed posts requisitioned for the conduct of examinations, the ACAUT stated.

“This process is as per the strict interpretation of the 5th August HC Judgment. It is the stand of the ACAUT that the cabinet by notifying 11/8/16 OM has treacherously denied tens of thousands of deserving educated unemployed youths from gainful employment.”

Secondly, it added, the “11/8/16 OM” is “most discriminatory” because the less-privileged candidates from the marginalized and backward tribes will be the most affected while the overall employment percentage of the eastern tribes ‘will reduce even further.’

“In short, this OM is an act of mischief by the cabinet. The chief secretary should not speak with forked tongue since he has already given an undertaking to the Court that the 6/6/16 OM will be implemented in letter and in spirit. The ACAUT cannot allow such a mischievous executive order to go unchallenged,” the note added.

(Al Ngullie, August 25, 2016; Eastern Mirror)

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