Shillong, April 13: The Hynniewtrep Youth Council (HYC) on Thursday submitted a three-point memorandum to the State Chief Secretary DP Wahlang on the roster system.
“We would like to see the government implement the roster prospectively and not retrospectively,” said HYC president Robert Kharjarin.
Talking about the second and third point they raised, he said secondly those posts which have already lapsed there should not be any backlog as per the policy and thirdly in the district level they would like to see that 80 percent for Khasi -Jaintia in Khasi Jaintia Hills should remain and we do not want it to change.
Breaking it down, he said the High Court has categorically stated in the recent disposal order that the Meghalaya government has not put a cut off date in the implementation of roster and the High Court has clearly left it to the legislature to determine the cut off date..
“Based on that order, we have filed our representation to the Chief Secretary to put our point that if the Government of India now has to decide the cut of date we would like to see the cutoff date as May 2022,” he said.
Citing that the Supreme court has in so many cases especially in the RK Subramanium case clearly stated that roster should be implemented prospectively and not retrospectively, he said, “We would like to see that if the government decides either through the State Legislative Assembly or through the All Party meeting or even the Cabinet we would like to see the cut off date should be 2022 onwards “.
Stating that some of the departments they have now started talking about filling up the backlog posts, he said, ” What is necessary to understand is that as per the Meghalaya Job Reservation Policy if there is any category who is unable to fill up a post that category can be filled up by another category and the next recruitment year there should be some adjustment”.
” But, if in that recruitment category if that post cannot be filled up that particular post will lapse. And now when it lapse how can you talk about backlog” he added.
He however said that if there are one or two posts which have not yet lapsed then it deserves to be filled up but when the post has already lapsed like the posts from 1972-73 post till 2023 it has already lapsed and so many recruitment years have passed.
” When it comes to backlog we want to see there should not be deviation from the policy and it should not be contrary to the policy,” he added.
Talking about the third point of their representation, he said, ” We have seen in the pata two three weeks there is a district recruitment agency both in East Khasi Hills and West Khasi Hills where they give roster separately for Khasi – Jaintia and Garo category but if we go as per the policy it says that in district level category there will be 80 percent for Khasi Jaintia in Khasi Jaintia Hills and 80 percent for Garos in Garo Hills”.
He said this trend has been followed for the past 50 years and it is illegal as the policy does not allow it to do so.
He informed that the Chief Secretary will place the matter in the cabinet and hoped that the cabinet will consider their point of view.
The HYC president also pointed out that there is a huge misunderstanding in social media and the streets amongst the Khasi-Jaintia and Garo community and so and the government should step in now and solve the problem either through the cabinet, state legislative Assembly or an all party meet.