Shillong, June 25: The Meghalaya Youth Foundation (MYF) through the Chief Secretary government of Meghalaya has submitted a memorandum to the National Commission for Schedule Tribe; the organization said that let the Regional office in Shillong be converted into the directorate office for the North Eastern Region.
The MYF in the memorandum said that the amendment made to Article 338 and the insertion of a new Article 338 A in the Constitution of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (NCSCST) with which the NCSCST was bifurcated into two different Commissions that is the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and National Commission for Scheduled Tribes since 19th of February, 2004. With this, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) has Six Regional Offices spread all over the country.
The Regional Office at Shillong, Meghalaya has all the eigth North Eastern States under its jurisdiction where so far it functions smoothly even though with skeletal staffs. Of late, the Commission Headquarters has inducted staffs from the TRIFED, New Delhi and transferred them to Regional Offices and at the Headquarters regional office Shillong which got a share of four staffs. This itself, is in fact a denial of employment of the local people of North East who are well versed with the respective regions and of the various Tribes residing in the NER.
It is heard that the sudden decision Without order to shift the Regional Office located at Shillong to Guwahati,Assam is irksome as this is the oldest office in the NER. The saying that the petition received by the Office is less than others does not stand as the office is created not only to receive Petitions , Complaints or Presentations, etc.
With regard to the duties and functions of the Commission, it is seen that it has numerous functions to fulfill provided sufficient staffs are appointed. But purposely, it has been found that the Shillong Office has so far been run by the Assistant Director (retired since 28th of February, 2015), one UDS, one Peon and one Chowkidar till the 31st of March, 2016, which is against its Total Staff’s Strength of twelve, total posts sanctioned. This will automatically undermine the actual performance of the Shillong Office.
By shifting the location of the office from the present location to an entirely new location will not help improve its performance. This is only a political move to please those 0representatives from other State who can influence the Commission Headquarters very recently maybe for redress of their grievances. This is a step-motherly attitude of the Commission towards its own Regional Office.
As regards to Staff Position in the Regional Office, Shillong, it is disheartened to mention that out of 12 sanctioned strength vide Headquarters’ letter N0.23/1/NCST/2007-Adm dated 6-12-2007, only 4 staff are in position. All other Posts are vacant. It can well be understood from the staffing position how difficult it is to run the Office without proper sanctioned Staff. Request has been made to the Headquarter to fill up the vacant posts either by Contractual, Daily wages or other mode but so far no positive reply has been received.
Again with the bifurcation of Erstwhile National Commission for Scheduled castes and Scheduled tribes into two separate Commissions w.e.f. 19-02-2004, this Regional Office of the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes has been again awarded the jurisdiction of 8 (eight) States of the North East Region in which each state has a good percentage of ST Population with Assam, Manipur, and Sikkim implementing the tribal Sub Plan. This in itself is a strongpoint on why a Directorate should be in Shillong.
As compared to the jurisdiction of the present Directorate, State Office of National Commission for Scheduled Caste Guwahati, it has the jurisdiction 6 (six) States – Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh of which only Assam and Manipur has a small percentage of SCs, i.e. below 7%. The other States – Meghalaya (Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh) has a very negligible SC Population below 1 % Arunachal Pradesh has no SC Population. The Special Component Plan is also implemented in 2 (two) states only – Assam and Manipur whereas Sikkim in under the charge of Kolkata Office.
During the year 1981, two more Offices were opened as Deputy Director’s Office, one at Guwahati State and the other at Agartala for Tripura State. As a result of this, the jurisdiction of the Office also changes to Meghalaya and Mizoram only. Recently, Smti Irani, Hon’ble Union Minister HRD, in her Convocational Speech at the North Eastern Hill University Convocation Programme 2016 in Shillong informed the gathering that NEHU will open up another Department to Study and Research the Customs, Traditions, Convention and Socio-Economic Life of the Tribals in the North East at the NEHU Campus, Mawlai Shillong. Moreover, in Shillong, the State Gov’t under the Department of Arts & Culture Meghalaya has one Tribal Research Institute.
