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| Azad’s double shift or Omar’s treble, BOSE babus don’t give two hoots | | Result is zero after 48 months of exercise to appoint 29 Junior Assistants | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Sep 14: Two of the state’s academic babus---former Chairman of J&K State Board of School Education (BOSE), Nisar Ahmed Ganai, and former Secretary, Veena Rajput---are busy with the process of “recruitment” of 29 Junior Assistants (JAs) even a year after their retirement. Believe it or not, it is a fact that they have not only retained the “selection list” with themselves but also refused to be moved by dozens of letters and telephonic requests from their equally indecisive successors in the last eleven months. While Prof Ganai is assiduously lobbying for Vice Chancellorship of Islamic University of Science & Technology Awantipore and Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University Rajouri, he and Prof Rajput have the dubious distinction of having broken all records of grabbing extensions at BOSE in the last seven years.
For the purpose of addressing the problem of shortage of manpower, Board of Governors of BOSE had, inter alia, created 29 posts of JAs on 30th September 2005. Applications were invited after nearly nine months vide Employment Notice No: F(Admn-B)CU/06 Dated 03-06-2006. Contrary to the procedure adopted by J&K State Subordinate Services Recruitment Board and other institutions, BOSE made it mandatory for the incumbents to attach bank draft worth Rs 500 to each of the applications. An amount of Rs 4,24,000-00 was thus collected from the poor candidates, many of them borrowing money from friends and relatives with the hope to repay them from their first salaries.
While 543 candidates applied for 12 posts in Jammu, 272 applications were received for equal number of posts in Kashmir. BOSE received 33 applications for the five posts reserved for Ladakh.
Then Chairman, Prof Ganai, constituted three selection committees separately for Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh which conducted the written test of all the candidates of Kashmir and Jammu on 03-12-2006 and that of the candidates from Ladakh on 19-06-2007. Thereafter three different committees, each headed by Chairman, were constituted which conducted interview of the candidates from Kashmir and Jammu in April 2007 and that of the candidates from Ladakh in June 2007.
Entire process was completed and the final selection list understandably made on 20-06-2007. It never came out even as Prof Ganai is on record to have announced in Radio Kashmir’s “Sheherbeen” programme as many as 15 times that the list would be released “next week”. Pleas of all the candidates fell on deaf ears of three successive regimes of Ghulam Nabi Azad of the fame of “double shift” delivery, Governor N N Vohra and now Omar Abdullah.
Even as the National Conference-led coalition government consumed reams of paper to trumpet in the lately concluded Budget session of Legislature that “thousands of unemployed youth” had been recruited in the last 8 months, nobody was held accountable in BOSE for the phenomenal procrastination----first by Prof Ganai and Prof Rajput for over three years and later by their successors, Prof Deshbandhu Gupta and Prof Bashir Ahmed Sheikh, for one full year. This all inspite of the fact that BOSE working suffered a great deal for shortage of clerical staff !
Without any plausible justification of sleeping over the recruitment process for nearly one year of his term, Chairman BOSE, Prof Deshnadhu Gupta, revealed to Early Times that the inordinate delay in releasing the selection list had been caused by the former Chairman and Secretary who have both retired in September 2008. He confirmed that the “selection list” had been retained by former Chairman and Secretary and they had never bothered to respond to repeated communications from his office in the last one year. He revealed that after the failed persuasion of one year, BOSE had last fortnight written a detailed letter to Principal Secretary Law, Akhtar Hussain Kochak, seeking legal opinion how to conclude the 4-year-long recruitment process. The legal opinion from the Government, he said, was still awaited.
“The final selection list of the candidates is still awaited and lying with the then dispensation. They were requested with a series of reminders, telephonic conversations and personal approach by the inquest authority i.e. Chairman, to furnish the final selection list but without any fruitful results. This issue was also placed before the Board Meeting held on 22-04-2009 and it was resolved that the record be obtained from the concerned, if the valid process has been followed appointments be made immediately but till date nothing concrete has been received by this office when a series of letters were dispatched for the purpose”, BOSE authorities have helplessly written to Law Department.
“Prof Ganai won’t give two hoots to Deshbandhu’s letters. He is a man of strong political and bureaucratic clout. He had one of his close relatives as Chief Minister Azad’s Political Advisor and has another as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s Principal Secretary. I believe neither of the two shielded him but these relations matter in the art of browbeating officials”, said a BOSE official. He claimed that the real reason of the selection list not coming out in the last 27 months was the “dispute” between Chairman Ganai and Secretary Rajput. Each of them has allegedly pushed favourites and money is seriously alleged to have changed hands.
“Shortlisting of meritorious candidates at all the three stages was dispensed with only to ensure that Chairman’s and Secretary’s favourites were accommodated. Releasing their selection list as well as terminating the whole process at this stage would be injustice to the meritorious candidates. The best judicious course would be to constitute a fresh committee which should conduct the interviews only in a transparent manner”, said a group of candidates who also demanded an explanation from the new BOSE authorities for their inaction in the last one year.
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