Noted historian and former Pro Vice Chancellor of NEHU, Dr. Milton Sangma said the job reservation policy of Meghalaya was a fair decision made by the leaders and founders of the State whereby, the reservations both for Garo and Khasi-Jaintia was decided to share equally as 40:40 respectively.
“The initiative taken by the pioneers of our State was well intended after viewing every pros and cons related to our job reservation in the past. However, on seeing the current trends and cases, the Garos who are supposed to get 40 per cent according to the reservation aren’t actually being practiced. What we see on the notification of advertisements against the results is completely different. We can see very less Garo candidates not being appointed to 40 per cent as per job reservation policy in most of the government departments in Meghalaya. For many years the Garo community have also failed to find out the allotments meant for them in the departments, which is why the gaps have been filled up by other communities. But this failure was still supposed to be kept as just and fair due to its reservation policy,” Dr. Sangma told Highland Post.
According to him, in the late 1970s and early 80s there were not much Garo candidates nominated in the technical lines due to their lack of educational qualifications and quite many factors “that the community did not meet the eligibility, which is why for this reason some of the posts were given to others, which is fair”.
“But that does not apply with today’s reasoning because there are many qualified and eligible candidates available presently even in technical departments,” Dr. Sangma added.
Regarding the roster system, Dr. Sangma said that at one point of time the roster system will need to change but if the implementation from the old regulations are not being fully implemented, it will need a compromised decision making where both the communities are fully aware of the problems and should make peaceful arrangements.
“These cannot be done at the moment but it will still need time to change at least in another two decades, probably it will be for everyone’s best interest and once every community is in a peaceful stage,” he said.
