By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Meghalaya High Court on Monday quashed the appointment of Ms. Loma Jyrwa as Mission Director of State Resource Centre for Women (SRCW).
The Court passed the judgement on a writ petition filed by Angela Rangad and represented by HS Thangkiew, N Mozika and associates, who challenged the appointment of Jyrwa, retired Deputy Director of Social Welfare Department.
While hearing the petition, Justice T Nandakumar Singh found that the selection process and pointedly the role of Director of Social Welfare, Himalaya Shangpliang, in appointment of Jyrwa as ‘biased and malafide’.
The State Resource Center for Women was constituted in 2012, under a Central Scheme, to create an independent body to monitor various government schemes and projects meant for women and intervene in policy formulation regarding empowerment of women. The Directorate of Social Welfare was meant to be the Nodal department in establishing the SRCW.
Jyrwa was Deputy Director, Social Welfare, and on the verge of retirement when this Central Scheme was pushed through after delaying it for almost two years. SRCW was supposed to be headed by a Mission Director/ Project Advisor, who could be from the non-governmental sector and had to be less than 50 years of age. To ensure that Jyrwa got this position after she retired, the Directorate of Social Welfare advertised the post without any upper age limit and created a selection committee with no independent experts but only insiders from the Government. The committee was headed by NS Samant who was then the Commissioner Secretary of the Social Welfare, and Shangpliang as the Secretary.
RTI papers which were used to establish the case revealed collusion of officers in the state Social Welfare department aided also by officers at the central level.
The documents also pointed towards a biased and compromised selection committee. The appointment of Jyrwa was not only biased but compromised the very purpose of the SRCW whose role is to monitor many of the Central schemes such as ICDS among others of which the officials of the Social Welfare Department including Jyrwa were directly responsible for and during whose time the audit pointed objections regarding financial irregularities, illegal procurement processes and most notably on quality of food supplied which included MSG laden Yummy noodles and substandard milk which was endangering the health of the children.
Angela Rangad, who is the petitioner, in a statement issued here on Tuesday said that most times important posts are filled up by serving and about to retire or retired bureaucrats flaunting all norms and regulations and denying legitimate and deserving candidates.