New Delhi: The Nagaland government has formed a high power committee (HPC) which will look into the demand of the 1,666 Adhoc government school teachers for immediate service regularisation. A meeting was held with the Nagaland Chief secretary and the All Nagaland Adhoc Teachers Group (ANATG) leaders in the presence of the Home Commissioner and officials of the Department of School Education, reported PTI.
ANATG-2015 Batch are appointed to different government schools in the state from 1994 to 2012, they started an indefinite hunger strike on Thursday night demanding regularisation of their service.
During the meeting, it was decided that an HPC would be constituted at the earliest to study the possibilities of their service regularisation within a year, ANATG president Ruoguotoslie said, as reported by PTI.
He added that ANATG leaders accepted the decision and signed the meeting outcome.
However, the outcome of the meeting was rejected by the other members saying that they would not accept anything else but continue with the agitation and hunger strike till their demand for service regularisation is met.
Subsequently, the ANATG leaders decided they would continue with the agitation for now and continue negotiations on Saturday, Ruoguotoslie said. The strike started four days after the peaceful protest outside the state civil secretariat by the ANATG-2015.
According to PTI, 38 Adhoc government teachers, including nine female teachers are on hunger strike while other members are also on peaceful protest demanding service regularisation.
The All Nagaland School Teachers Association (ANSTA) had approached the commissioner and secretary of school education on Thursday but there was no positive outcome, its spokesperson said.
Principal Director of the Directorate of School Education, Thavaseelan K on Tuesday said that the members of the ANATG-2015 batch are not illegal appointees but they were appointed "irregularly without following proper norms" against sanctioned posts at different times, PTI reported.
Thavaseelan K added that it's not that the department doesn't want to help but the department and the government are constrained because of the standing order of the Supreme Court and High Court not to regularise any Adhoc appointees.
The department has also suggested the Adhoc teachers move the court to vacate the order, without which it would not be possible to regularise their service, PTI reported.
ANATG has on the other hand claimed that despite the courts' orders other government departments have regularised the services of their Adhoc appointees.