Shillong, Sept 20: The opposition Voice of the People Party (VPP) on Wednesday opposed the government’s decision to appoint A. Ali as full-fledged secretary of the Meghalaya State Council of Technical Education (MSCTE) after her retirement.

Moving a short duration discussion on the issue in the Assembly, VPP legislator from Nongkrem Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit alleged favouritism in the decision to appoint Ali as secretary of the MSCTE since she had once forgone her promotion to the challenging post of principal Shillong Polytechnic.

He said the number of Secretaries on dual charge till date are six (these include: Dr R.N Hazarika (Addl. Director), H.W.Tham (HOD Electrical), R. Dhar (JDHTE/Addl. DHTE), P. Karmakar (JDHTE/Addl.DHTE), O. Ropmay (JDHTE/Addl.DHTE) and A. Ali ( JDHTE/Addl.Director).

He said there were three HODs who decided to forgo their promotion as Principal in the year 2012, for not willing to take up challenging task and these are: Bhattacharjee HOD Electrical, S. Sinha HOD Mechanical and A. Ali HOD Civil Engineering.

Subsequently, the government had to appoint W L Warjri, who is the HOD Electronics but junior to them in terms of seniority.

Basaiawmoit said interestingly both S Bhattacharjee (retired) and A Ali served as HODs in Shillong Polytechnic under the Principalship of W L Warjri before they were transferred to the Directorate as Deputy Director respectively.

In 2018, the government decided to appoint A Khongphai, M Kyndiah and SP Basaiawmoit as Principals of Williamnagar Polytechnic, Tura Polytechnic and Jowai Polytechnic, respectively.

Basaiawmoit alleged that however in 2019 the government promoted A Ali to the post of Joint Director and this action on the part of the government deprived WL Warjri from the post of Joint Director in DHTE and this has created a wrong precedence in which a Principal who had a field experience of institutional Administration was prevented from getting the post at the Directorate.

“Moreover, the same person who was promoted to the post of Joint Director in 2019 was again promoted to the post of Additional Director thereby superseded three Principals namely, A. Khongphai, M. Kyndiah and S. P. Basaiawmoit which is a clear indication of favoritism on the part of the higher authority to a person who had once forgone her promotion to the challenging post of Principal Shillong Polytechnic,” he said.

“Again, the name of the said person appeared when the government announced its decision to appoint her as the full-fledged Secretary of the MSCTE after her retirement. The question now is how this person can surreptitiously manage to reach to the level of Additional Director despite her failure to show an amount of responsibility to serve the department in any given situation.”

“And now she has prepared a post for herself after retirement. Is it justified for a person who had forgo promotion to avoid responsibility to be rewarded with such a post? Is this not a discrimination against our own people?” he asked.

The VPP legislator further added, “I fail to understand why different governments in Meghalaya choose to create this kind of environment among the officials where some are given favour and others are not. Have we ever thought what kind of situation we are putting those who are being deprived by this step motherly treatment of the government to its own people?”

Demanding the government to take corrective steps on the matter, Basaiawmoit said, “People outside are saying that the Britishers had ruled over us and we are forcefully made to accede to the dominion of India and now after we had attained our Statehood, we had expected that Lyngdohs, Sangmas, Marbaniangs, Kharkongors, and others would govern us. However, unfortunately we are now landed up being ruled by Kumars. There is a saying that there will be no smoke without fire, therefore it is for the government to take serious note of this perception which may be right or wrong. The government should be reminded that it is being judged by conscious citizens for every action. Therefore, I strongly feel that the government should find time to rectify its mistake.”