The NEHU Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) has accused NEHU vice chancellor Prof. Prabha Shankar Shukla of working against the interest of local tribals by appointing people from outside Meghalaya in various positions in the university.
In a complaint sent to National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) Member Nirupam Chakma, the NEHUTA said, “He (Prof. Shukla) has attempted to completely change the harmonious tribal, ethnic and other Indian character of NEHU into a monolith of Hindi Hindu Brahminical University.”
NEHUTA also said that Prof. Shukla appointed retired Army Colonel Omkar Singh as Controller of Examinations by keeping out qualified, academically experienced and intellectually sound candidates of tribal and ethnic origins from Meghalaya.
“He imported a candidate without much credentials in the field of running academic administration and a complex thing like conduct of office of Controller of Examinations. This person retired from a school and obviously, without any experience of working in any college or University. In spite of having well-qualified tribal candidates, who have taught in university and colleges for decades, he still appointed Omkar Singh which smacks of favouritism and nepotism. Due to his serious lack of understanding on the functioning of the university system, the declaration of results was getting delayed at every level putting the careers of thousands of tribal students at stake,” NEHUTA said.
It also said that Omkar Singh was later appointed as Registrar of NEHU whose failure resulted in total mayhem during the CUET Undergraduate examination in NEHU on May 15, 2024 as he was the supervisor of the CUET centre in the university.
NEHUTA also said that three non-tribals were appointed as Deputy Registrar while another non-tribal was appointed as Finance Officer.
“In none of the three posts of Deputy Registrar, he found no local suitable candidate. The idea is to deprive qualified local candidates and import people like Omkar Singh and romp over NEHU so that an insensitive ill-informed and rootless crop of newcomers from a certain region of the country can rule over NEHU by side-lining all shades of transparency, fairness, natural justice and the like,” it said.
NEHUTA also said that Prof. Shukla did the worst by reappointing an already appointed one-term Dean of the School of Social Sciences to another term while depriving scores of qualified local tribal and other genuine Professors.
It also alleged that last year, Prof. Shukla appointed some 87 new teachers of which not even 10 per cent are from Meghalaya and from the tribal community.
“This is how Prof. Shukla aims to culturally and educationally uproot local tribal students and teachers from Meghalaya and North East by preferring candidates from a certain region in a prejudicial and biased manner. In order to achieve his nefarious design of favouring certain candidates and denying deserving local tribal candidates, the vice chancellor has deliberately constituted the Selection Committees whose members may not be from the empanelled list duly approved by the statutory bodies of NEHU, which is a mandatory requirement,” it added.
Further, the teachers’ body said that Prof. Shukla arbitrarily gave a probation of two year to newly appointed tribal faculty members which clearly violates the Clause 11.1 of the UGC Regulation, 2018 which states that “The minimum period of probation of a teacher shall be one year, extendable by a maximum period of one more year in case of unsatisfactory performance”.
“This illegitimate action of the vice chancellor has resulted in agony among tribal teachers and is tantamount to exploitation of tribal teachers and gross misuse of power by Shukla,” it said.
Stating that Prof. Shukla also denied proper pay fixation and service protection, advance increments etc to newly recruited tribal teachers since last year and is exploiting their position of being under probation by assigning them non-academic duties, the NEHUTA also said that the vice chancellor did not made any serious attempt to fill up vacant positions in Botany Department where there is less than half the number of total sanctioned posts although there are many eligible local tribal candidates to fill up the vacant posts.
“Moreover, there have been recent reports of exploitation of the tribal teachers as guest faculties in this department and other departments by the university authorities,” it added.
NEHUTA also said that Prof. Shukla, since joining NEHU has not conducted any interview under Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) for stage 5 to 6 thereby denying promotions of more than 15 tribal senior professors who have retired without getting their dues. It also said that he failed to conduct interviews under CAS in all stages which are supposed to be done every six months as per UGC guidelines, thereby denying tribals of their genuine rights for promotions for years.
“The illegitimate actions of the vice chancellor appear to be never ending. He has appointed a Professor of NEHU, Tura Campus as ‘Campus Director’ of that campus which is arbitrary and does not have any statutory provisions as per NEHU Act, Statutes and Ordinances or UGC Regulation 2018 which is in effect. Again, he ignored tribal professors for the said post from the Tura campus of NEHU,” it alleged.
