Editor,
The Meghalaya Public Service Commission was set up under the provision of Article 315 of the Constitution of India. As such this is an important Institution and should be treated with dignity and respect. Unfortunately, this Institution has been degraded when there is no serious effort to appoint a full fledges Chairperson for more than a year now. The Search Committee duly constituted for the purpose of looking for a person suitable for the post has not been able to focus on any one yet. It is rather strange that the state is starved of suitable persons for if one looks around there is no dearth of competent, ethical persons in Meghalaya. as such. One year is a long time and if this Search Committee has failed in its duty then a new one should be formed post haste to carry out the search operation. Earlier there was a report that the Chairman of the Search Committee who is the present Chief Secretary of the state would head the Commission after his retirement which explained the outrageously year long wait. But now that the service of the Chief Secretary has been extended so would it be justified to again wait for him until his extended service period is over? Sounds a bit selfish because it is as if he is the only person fit for everything. This is an insult to others as well. Someone had suggested that the senior most member of the Commission may be promoted to the post of Chairperson . Quite logical indeed! . But if one is to look at the present personalities who are members of the Commission, I do not think any of these members would fit the bill. This is a lesson for the government not to choose people to be members of the Commission out of political considerations only but not for what they are worth .Now there will be no scope of having a suitable heir to the Chairperson’s post. A Commissions sans Chairperson for a year and maybe in the near future is a lame duck and will affect the work for which it was set up.
Yours etc.,
Donbok Syiemlieh,
Shillong-14
Parallel objectives
Editor,
Apropos to Dominic S. Wankhar’s opinion stating that Meghalaya has its own political movement and his indifferent views about Ardent Basaiawmoit and Arvind Kejriwal, I remember a famous saying, “Don’t bother which color the cat is as long as it can kill the rat”. Here I would point out that both these personalities are same cats with different colors but carrying the same objective i.e., a fight to protect the downtrodden, the powerless, ordinary people and kill the same rat (corruption, ineffective government, governance failure etc…). They are on the same boat rowing against the same tide of ineffective Government and governance played out by our main stream political parties as well as our home grown regional parties. The only difference is that Kejriwal has done it in a bigger stage with more limelight whereas for Basawiamoit has done so with limited media limelight. The demands and wishes of the Delhi electorate are no different from ours. Responsive, accountable, transparent political parties and above all a political will and the implementation part which the AAP has rightly striven for after coming to power is what we too need. This is what the common folks of our state have been aspiring for all these years. Thus we can conclude that what AAP is delivering and what our people need are not different paths so it is wrong to say that we don’t need AAP in our soil.
As Rikordor L Nonglait also pointed out correctly, the egotism among our home grown parties has played havoc, with no common objective and the Congress reaping all the benefits. As common citizens of India we need an alternative to counter this chaos, and AAP is one such spark which provides a ray of hope to reform the current political incoherence. We should give them enough opportunity as we have done to other parties in the last six decades. We need to revive the faith in politics and that is possible only when a responsible party takes the centre stage with a prime focus on fair policy making and its implementation, a pro poor ideology, a move towards bridging the vast income gap prevailing in our country and breaking the politician- bureaucrat- corporate nexus.
It would have been nice had Mr. Basaiawmoit taken the initiative and invited AAP to build the platform for an accommodative and participative system where each and every responsible citizen of our state gets a platform to raise his/her voice and sets in motion the wheels for bringing a paradigm shift needed in our state.
Yours etc.,
Sonie Kharduit,
New Delhi -60