SHILLONG, March 21: The HYC has petitioned State Law Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh seeking rectification of the office memorandum on roster system which was issued on May 10 last year on direction of the High Court of Meghalaya.
In the letter, HYC president Robertjune Kharjahrin observed that the office memorandum has no statute which authorises to prepare the Reservation Roster to be effective retrospectively. Calling it illegal, the HYC president has asked the government to rectify it at the earliest.
“We have seen in various advertisements in government offices, certain reserved categories have got more seats than the others because of this faulty and illegal office memorandum. This may lead to deprivation of job to the deserving candidates and also leads to unnecessary litigation. Hence, the office memorandum needs to be rectified immediately,” Kharjahrin said.
He recalled the judgments of the High Court on two occasions with regard to the issue — April 5 and April 20 last year, while adding that the state government had notified the guidelines subsequent to the judgments in the May 10 office memorandum.
He said Point D (1) of the memorandum states: “In order to prepare the Reservation Roster, names of all the candidates holding the post as on the date of notification of this OM (office memorandum), starting with the earliest appointee, since the time the Reservation Policy came into effect, subject to information being available, shall be filled up in the Reservation Roster against the point in the Roster.”
With regard to this guideline, Kharjahrin pointed out that “as per the Resolution No. PER.222/71/138, dated January 12, 1972, which provides for the Reservation Policy in the state, it is clearly stated in Paragraph 2 that ‘if sufficient number of suitable candidates for filling up the reserved vacancies is not available from the respective classes in any particular year, then such vacancies will be available to others. But the deficiency in the number of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes will be carried forward to the next recruitment year and made good in the recruitment of that year, provided that the reservation on account of the deficiency shall not be carried forward for more than one year’”.
The HYC president further observed that after the expiry of the second year, these reservations shall be treated as lapsed. It has also been decided that at no time shall the number of normal reserved vacancies and the carry forward vacancies together exceed 90 per cent of the total number of vacancies in that year.
Referring to a High Court order pertaining to the preparation of the roster dated May 11, 2022, the HYC president said that the court has clearly stated that “since the roster system is now in place, and without going into the merits thereof, the suo motu proceedings are dropped.”
Kharjahrin said that the HC has also clearly stated that “the validity of the roster system has not been gone into”. Hence, it may not be misconstrued that the High Court has accepted the validity of the Roster System as per the Office Memorandum, he added.
“In our opinion, the guidelines for the preparation of Reservation Roster as per the Office Memorandum dated May 10, 2022, are contradictory to the Resolution dated 12th January, 1972. Guidelines as per the Office Memorandum dated 10th May, 2022, provide that the Roster shall be prepared since the time the Reservation Policy came into effect i.e. from the year 1972. However, the resolution clearly specifies in Paragraph 2 that after the expiry of the second year, these reservations shall be treated as lapsed in case of non-filling of reserved category posts in any recruitment year,” Kharjahrin said.
