SHILLONG, June 27 (MExN): Intensifying its ongoing protest against the alleged misrepresentation of facts organized, the North Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) on June 27 served a legal notice to the Vice-Chancellor Prof. S.K. Srivastava. A legal notice served to VC of NEHU asking as to “why no criminal proceeding would be initiated against him for his manipulation and tempering of the EC minutes to misguide the MHRD and the office of the Visitor of NEHU,” stated NEHUTA in a press release from its President Prof. XP Mao The NEHUTA members have also boycotted VC’s meeting today protest against his brazen defiance of the Act and Statues of the university, it said. The VC had convened a general meeting comprising all the teaching and non-teaching employees of the University without any agenda, which was highly irregular and improper, it added. Consequently, all the teachers of NEHU on the appeal of NEHUTA Executive Committee had boycotted and the VC informed the virtually empty house that he had decided to discontinue the payment of HASA to the employees of the University with effect from June 14, NEHUTA further maintained. The issue erupted over the “dubious role” played by the Prof. S K Srivastava to deprive the employees of NEHU the special Hill Area Special Allowance (HASA) entitled to them by virtue of the Acts and Ordinances of the university. NEHUTA has been continually alleging that the VC has been “stubborn to discontinue an allowance enjoyed by the employees of the university by virtue of a statutory provision in the form of OE 10 of the NEHU ordinance since January 1995.” “By repealing the HASA the VC has initiated an arbitrary exercise of nullifying a statutory provision of the University without following the procedures established by the law,” the Association further maintained.
