North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) professor Lakhon Kma has hit out at the state government for, what he said, was its prioritisation of festivals and rock concerts over education.
Kma, who is president of the NEHU Teachers’ Association and who had also run unsuccessfully for Parliament in last year’s general election as an independent, delivered his outburst today following the controversy of recent days as it emerged that nearly 5,000 Meghalaya students had been allocated Common University Entrance Test – Undergraduate (CUET-UG) centres outside the state to sit their exams.
The state government was roundly blamed for not ensuring that there were enough seats for Meghalaya students within the state’s testing centres. The government, however, blamed the National Testing Agency (NTA) for not raising the issue of a shortfall in time, blamed the students for picking centres outside the Meghalaya or nearby locations in Assam and local educational institutions for not offering their facilities as testing centres.
Kma today put the blame squarely on the Meghalaya government’s shoulders, saying that it can make advance preparations for the Cherry Blossom festival and concerts, sometimes a year or two in advance. “But for CUET, which has been held for the past three years, the government wasn’t ready, which shows that its priority is only festivals,” he added while claiming that the government lacks interest in education and this is reflected in the state’s downward trend.
It is up to the public to demand that the state government be prepared in advance and put in place the infrastructure required, like computers and high-speed internet, so that the students can appear for the examinations within Meghalaya and not be burdened by the extra cost and time necessary to travel to distance examination centres, Kma stated. “If we as parents do not demand this from the government the same thing will happen next year.”
He posited that if the government had spent the money used on the Cherry Blossom Festival in buying computers and ensuring high-speed internet connections, Meghalaya would have had enough NTA centres.
Meanwhile, Kma also blamed NEHU Vice-Chancellor Prof Prabha Shankar Shukla and former Registrar Omkar Singh for the CUET fiasco last year. According to him, this could be the reason that NEHU was not among the CUET-UG centres this year. NEHUTA, which Kma leads, has been at loggerheads with Shukla over a number of issues. Last year, the NEHU centre saw delays of several hours in the conduct of the CUET Postgraduate exam.
