This is the story of how 71 deserving candidates were selected as lecturers in May 2004 and what their fate has come to be today. The Department of the erstwhile Higher & Technical Education (H&TE) – now Higher Education – advertised for recruitment of 71 lecturers through the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) in November 2003. According to the advertisement, all such posts in which contract lecturers who would have been serving for 5 years and above by December 31, 2003, were regularized and not advertised for fresh recruitment; while the posts for which contract employees would have served for less than the above mentioned period were advertised in the same advertisement, and the contract employees holding those posts were to sit along with fresh applicants for NPSC interview.
The interview was held in May 2004, and thus even contract employees who had not served 5 years yet very willingly went through the recruitment process without any complaint. 32 such lecturers filed a case in the Gauhati High Court implicating the NPSC and the Department of H&TE as respondents. However, among the 32, 11 passed their respective interviews/exam and withdrew their names as petitioners. Meanwhile, somehow, on the basis of some unfounded grounds and with insubstantial ideas the group managed to work out a way to get Stay Order from the said court regarding their service. So the 21 remained and have continued to be petitioners till date.
The 21 petitioners are: 1. Ms. Moajungla (History), 2. Ms. Atula B. Aier (History), 3. Mr. Libemo Kithan (History), 4. Mr. Mulehu Khesoh (History), 5. Mr. Jnanendra Sharma (Geography), 6. Mr. Selie Puro (Geography), 7. Mr. Samuel Ao (Physics), 8. Ms. Neivotsonuo B. Kuotsu (Chemistry), 9. Ms. Bokali (Pol. Sc.), 10. Mr. G. Phukato Sema (Pol. Sc.), 11. Mr. K. Nokmarenba (Pol. Sc.), 12. Mr. Benrithung Patton (Pol. Sc.), 13. Ms. Rosy Kinny (Pol. Sc.), 14. Ms. Meyisangla Lkr (Eco.), 15. Mr. Vikhozolie Chucha (Eco.), 16. Dr. Temjennaro Jamir (Education), 17. Ms. Yashikala (English), 18. Mr. Victor Vero (English), 19. Ms. Kevitsuno Linyu (English), 20. Ms. Temjeninla Tia (Socio), and 21. Mr. Ruokuosatuo Yhome (Zoology).
In the meantime, three (3) lecturers in English claiming to have completed 5 years in contract service according to assurance of an official in the Department of H&TE had also already filed a case in the same court and refused to sit for the recruiting process. The claim they made and have stuck to for the cut-off date to make it 5 years in contract service was/is March 31, 2004. However, the claim was quashed through a Cabinet Decision that the cut-off date would finally be January 16, 2004. Yet, they have also been able work out ways to get a Stay Order in the said court. They are 1. Ms. Anungla Imdong Phom, 2. Ms. Alemla Longkumer, and 3. Ms. Tushimenla Imlong.
It may be mentioned here that out of the three (3) lecturers in English, one (1) has resigned from her post and has gone to pursue another career. However, because she has not withdrawn her name as a petitioner in the Gauhati High Court till the writing of this article, the next deserving NPSC-selected candidate is not being appointed yet. She has become an agent in preventing the deserving candidate from getting appointed. Then, owing to the separate Stay Orders, the 23 lecturers (21+2) lecturers who should be out of service already have continued to be given extension in service by the state. Such is the case because of which out of the 71 selected candidates, 24 are still stranded big time.
While the case has prolonged and dragged on in the court till date, the group of 21 contract employees who appeared the interview and failed had recently proceeded to make matters worse for everyone: The group impleaded all the 71 justly selected candidates to be respondents too. This was and still is a sheer challenge of the whole recruiting process with the sole intention to nullify the same. This was/is an act of double-daring the NPSC, the Dept of Higher Education (HE) and the selected candidates to prove their common stand just and valid, when the petitioners themselves tried their best to be in the employment through the same recruiting process and been found greatly wanting.
Out of the group of 21, the majority does not have NET/UGC qualification. The fact is, they were initially not even called for the interview but were called later on grounds of mercy and grace. They know they are unfit to occupy the posts they have continued to hold all these months. But without an iota of shame they have continued serving in the posts they had been holding earlier, by misleading their lawyers that they deserve to continue serving; making their lawyers fight tooth and nail in their interest and with an unwillingness to lose the battle even for their own professional prestige’s sake. Now, it is necessary to keep in mind that the 21 who failed and the other 2 who did not appear the interview claiming to have already made 5 years (making a total of 23 contract lecturers) have been trying every means within their grasps to wrongly retain what should no longer belong to them. They have been successful till date in claiming innocence and in that they deserve to be vindicated thus. While so doing, they may consider themselves smart and the general public might have been fooled into believing that to be true. However, this is an unconscious confession on the part of the petitioners that they are worthless anywhere else, and that they are scared for themselves in facing life’s challenges as they should. Why otherwise would they cling on to something they do not deserve and are not entitled to having, if they were entitled to once (through whatever means)? If they respect themselves enough to claim they can achieve greatly even elsewhere, they would not still be engaged in this battle in such nasty, filthy manner, would they?
IT IS BECAUSE OF SUCH PEOPLE WHO LACK QUALITY AND STILL GET EMPLOYED IN THE FIELD OF TEACHING THAT THE PROFESSION BECOMES IGNOBLE. What can the mediocre and those below even mediocrity teach our young? The result is nothing more than mediocrity or less than that, because like begets like. It is not because they love the profession but because of their self-doubt that they continue to clutch on to a field they somehow got their hands on. They exercised pressure to get into the profession initially, and still do to have things their way. They and those that support them are used to throwing their weights around but they must not be allowed to get away with it anymore. It will be apt for the wise to ask how these people got into the job in the first place. For there are so many many more who by the exercise of positive will did not get into it earlier because the posts did not get advertised: the simple reason being that they did not want to taint themselves with the label that “they flexed influence to get there”.
Meanwhile, the deserving candidates are still at a loss and this is gross injustice. The 21 failed contract lecturers impleaded the honourably selected candidates, and the names of the latter were published as respondents in a premier local daily on November 20, 2005. It was a torture, a mental harassment that the proficient had to undergo in being challenged as incompetent. That was an insult to the dignity of the selected candidates as well as to the selection Commission and the Department concerned. It has become a saga of the mockery of a clean selection/recruitment process. With the two separate Stay Orders, the 23 contract employees have wrongly enjoyed the government patronage for the past nearly two years, clinging on to the posts they no longer deserve to hold (if they thought they deserved it once through links and influence). Tell the selected-yet-wronged candidates if that is not shameless! The 21 contract lecturers must have felt unbound joy in having names of the 71 selected deserving candidates published and being scrutinized beyond rationality, but it is with sadness and much unwillingness that we send for publication the names of the unscrupulous manipulators numbering 23. It is only the need to bring out the truth and the fervent desire for justice in this ongoing case that compel us to do so.
This tragic episode started with the government/Department concerned giving out late offer/appointment letters to the successful candidates. It is about time that the government wakes up to the fact that it no longer should jeopardize the careers of the meritorious and the deserving by being lackadaisical, even if it had been doing so in the past. The government over the years has lost too many cases in courts for whatsoever reasons.
Now, when it has every reason to win, it would be a shame that will go down the history of Human Resource utilization in the state, if the government does not do enough to win this case to show it believes in its own promises and is desirous to redeem its image. Arguably it has never had a chance like in this case to show what it is worth and capable of doing, when it comes to doing things rightly for its own sake and for the sake of justice in the state. Eleven (11) good long years it did not advertise for lectureship and when it does and the recruitment process is eventually undertaken it gets scornfully slapped with a lawsuit and dragged to the court unceremoniously. The government should not allow itself to be sucked by parasites. No it should not anymore! As for the NPSC, it should stand its ground that the recruitment process has been fair, which is the fact. It should do all it fairly can to boost the positive image that it has started to create for itself in the recent past.
Both the Department concerned and the Commission must give their best in providing their lawyers with all necessary information and documents without a fuss. It is better for them to stay clean when they ought to, and deserve to, by doing the needful than not do the needful and lose their faces with far-reaching negative effects and after-effects. This case and how it culminates will be a story which is going to serve as a very very significant precedence; to make it positive and inspiring or to make it negative and poignant is to a great extent up to them.
Meanwhile, many have raised the question of why the government instead has not appointed the selected candidates in the relevant lectureship posts advertised in 2005. The selected candidates tried their best to see that being made possible but learnt that was not to be. Let the government as an accountable and transparent system answer to the public what the reasons were, for we do not take that task upon ourselves to be our duty. The 24 yet to be appointed have for countless times faced people asking what has happened to their jobs: some inquiring with pure concern while others with scorn and jeering looks in their faces. Bless the caring concerned souls! Also may it be known that at any point of time Cabinet decision is in regards to the state as a whole and not of a particular department alone. It is now tremendously imperative that intellectuals and truth-loving people voice their opinions on this matter because the cupboard is laid bare before all. It is even more pertinent for the students-loving organizations, or those that claim to be so, to speak their minds without any hesitation and prejudice. So far they have been more silent than be involved in advocating and upholding the rights of the deserving, thus affecting the right of students to learning from competent lecturers.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Yet it is more evil when “justice denied with finality” is preferred to “justice delayed for a period of time”. Much wrong has already been done in this regard. How much more harm needs to be done to further illustrate what is evil? Each selected lecturer deserving to have been appointed and yet so far not given the privilege they deserve has lost at least 16 months of salary amounting to at least Rs 2,08,000/- (Two lac eight thousand rupees) only and has spent much to shuttle between Nagaland and Guwahati and to stay mobile in Nagaland to carry out legality-related homework, and still is at a loss. Calculate this against 24 who are at a loss, and you get a total of at least Rs. 49,92,000/- (Forty nine lacs and ninety two thousand Rupees) only getting into the wrong hands in terms of salary alone within 16 months. That means that all this while, the undeserving have been sucking from the life’s energy-giving nectar, that is, the government treasury. Who is guilty here? Who is going to address their losses? Let the just and the courageous speak! Still if no one should voice concern over this, then perhaps that is to sadly mean that there is not a single courageous soul in Nagaland willing to speak in the interest of justice!
Respecting the intelligence of the readers this story has been told, that they may know the truth, and that they may know the truth apart from what is falsity but appears to be truth. However sweet-mouthed they may be in cajoling their lawyers into believing lies to be truth, someday the sugar-coated tongue of the undeserving 23 will cause stomach upset and sicken many. MAY IT ALSO BE KNOWN THAT TRUTH WILL FINALLY STAND – WITHIN OR WITHOUT A COURT OF LAW INSTITUTED BY THE FALLIBLE MAN. And when that day dawns when truth is established, the burdened conscience (if there should still be a tinge of humanity left) of the guilty will be as troubled as ever. And they will even know more shame. So sad yet so true!
Teaching in a true spirit is an awesome job. Many people think that it is an easy job and a profession that guarantees peace of mind. But may it be known that a person perhaps cannot commit a greater crime than misleading students with wrong information and assigning lesser marks to answers deserving better marks or assigning more marks to answers deserving lesser marks. May it also be known that when the unqualified undeserving individual “miseducates” the young today, this person wrongly in teaching profession destroys a generation who in turn will unwittingly destroy another generation. And in the passage of time, that becomes a vicious cycle. Now, may it also be known that because they don’t possess the requisite qualification and/or merit, those who continue to occupy the lectureship posts they do not deserve are being given the consent, the mandate, to commit intellectual crimes mentioned above. We register our displeasure and protest against the thriving of such evil! May the fruit of their crimes be upon their heads! And if anyone who has prided oneself at always being judicious fears to support justice today, doom looms large on our society! And those in power but wielding it with an authority less than honourable shall suffer shame and loss that the mortal man cannot incur. Yet our present sorrow is not to mean that the wronged-selected-candidates have only gloom and non-support to fear in the days to come. We are optimistic positive things can still happen.
NPSC Selected Lecturers 2004
