Mukul denies favouritism
SHILLONG: Chief Minister Dr Mukul Sangma has denied in the floor of the assembly that there was any favouritism shown on the part of the Meghalaya Public Service Commission (MPSC) in the appointment of 49 vacant posts in the Agriculture department.
The Chief Minister who laid a statement in the Assembly on Wednesday on a call attention moved by Chokpot legislator Clifford R Marak on the news report under caption “Another Job Scam hits the State” said that the eligibility criteria for any recruitment to any vacancies arising in any department were set by that department and such criteria are prescribed in the service rules.
In all the recruitments, these criteria were clearly specified in the requisition and the MPSC issued the advertisement accordingly “In the instant recruitment, there was no mention made by the department that weightage should be given to candidates who had pursued the courses and acquired their degrees through Government quota. It was never specified that special consideration would be given to candidates of senior batch from among such Government-sponsored candidates,” the Chief Minister said.
He also said that similarly there was no mentioned that preference would be given to gold medalists or persons with particular achievements.
“The advertisement issued by the commission carried only those criteria set forth by the department requisition. The selection of eligible candidates by the Commission was based strictly on these criteria,” Dr Sangma said.
The Chief Minister, however, informed that the Government regularly sponsored candidates for studying BSC (Agriculture) and BSC (Horticulture) courses outside the State against the quotas allocated to Meghalaya in several Central universities.However, he said that the department unequivocally states that ‘on completion of the course, the Government does not guarantee any appointment under the department.’
“In fact, the department simply assists the Agricultural and Horticultural colleges in selection of students for these based on their Class XII result, as in the case of students sponsored by the Animal Husbandry & Veterinary, Education and Health and Family Welfare department. These students are called stipendiary,” Dr Sangma informed.
He said that perhaps, the State quota mentioned in the news report referred to these ‘stipendiary students’. “Since the department has made it amply clear that there is no job guarantee for such stipendiary students on completion of the course, the non-stipendary students have an equal right to complete for these vacancies,” Chief Minister said.
The filling up of 49 vacancies under the agriculture department is snowballing into a major controversy. Candidates belonging to the state quota have been neglected and gold medal winners among the candidates have not been selected. As per reports, out of the total 98 candidates belonging to the 2008 batch onwards who completed their BSC Agriculture through the State quota, only 16 got selected while as many as 39 candidates who got selected are from outside the State quota. Even gold medalists were not selected, sources had informed.
It may be mentioned that The interview of candidates for filling up the posts of agriculture development officer, horticulture development officer and scientific officer under the agriculture department were conducted recently by the Meghalaya Public Service Commission. MPSC conducted the personal interviews from February 17 to 21 while the result of the interview was declared on February 28.
