SHILLONG: The Education scam of 2009 has resulted in 506 lower primary school teachers losing job. The CBI has already charge sheeted former Education Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh and retired government officials, JD Sangma and AI Lyngdoh for manipulating score sheets of candidates. After the first CBI report which had revealed irregularities in the recruitment in five centres, the government had terminated the service of 246 teachers. Following the second report of the CBI which examined the remaining ten centres, the Education department on June 29 terminated the service of another batch of 260 teachers. The CBI had segregated both tainted and non tainted teachers who were appointed allegedly through unfair means.
The All Primary School Teachers’ Association general secretary, FC Shullai said that the association is going through the termination letters. “We will appeal against the decision of government but we have not decided whether the appeal should be made in High Court or Supreme Court. We are examining how the government suddenly terminated the services of teachers without giving any notice”, Shullai said.
Though the CBI had probed 10 centres where recruitment took place, the investigating agency examined documents of eight centres as papers related to two others were missing. After the CBI submitted the report to the High Court of Meghalaya, the government had constituted a high level panel as per the direction of the court. The court in its order on July 5 last year had asked the panel to further examine the education scam case and dispose of the matter within six months. The committee headed by Additional Chief Secretary, Rebecca Suchiang had submitted the report to the education department which finally decided to terminate the services of 260 tainted teachers. The court had ordered that “if large scale manipulations or interference of public representative or any other person are found, the committee may recommend scrapping of the whole selection process of the concerned centres.