At long last the government of Nagaland has banned contract appointments in all the departments in the state. The department of Personnel and Administrative reform in its office memo notified the ban on Monday June 6. This will be one of the first such blanket ban on all the departments with regard to contract appointments by the state government.
However the memo came with a rider that in the event of extreme urgency, a person could be appointed on contract basis but not any other like ad-hoc/casual/temporary/work-charged etc. and only after placing a requisition to and clearance from the Nagaland Public Service Commission. It further adds conditions in cases of delay by the NPSC for recruitment that the contract can be extended beyond one year with prior clearance from the NPSC, the P&AR and the state cabinet.
In actuality the whole provision of appointing on contract should have been solely to address specific urgent requirements. It should have been there for the very same reason only in the very first place but such intellectual deficiencies can be seen only in Nagaland. The same is true for the other appointments like ad-hoc, casual, temporary and work-charged but it can be assumed that as the name differs it was used in Nagaland for the sake of differentiation to somehow specifically bypass certain rules. Even though the new regulation aims to better regulate the contract appointments on a need basis, as long the political will is missing there will always be loopholes and the riders in the current office memo will be misused. If misused the rider gives the department bureaucrats one year of free hand and then the cabinet (read ministers) the next year onwards with high chances of collusion of the two. For years NPSC was supposed to be the only recruitment agency of the entire state government job but many departments continued to have their own recruitment boards citing various reasons. There were also instances when NPSC was blamed for slow recruitment process and the departments were”forced” to employ contingencies et al due to the urgent requirements. Moreover as long as the extension of contract keeps happening the actual purpose of the current memo if any will also be defeated. The various labour related laws will also kick in with the passage of time and their contract length being extended, ultimately forcing the government to regularise the contract employees. Some will not hesitate to take the legal route for regularisation of their posts.
It is also noteworthy that the notification came about the same evening after it was widely published in all the media that the department of Health and Welfare had made 319 illegal appointments in the last 2 years. Though co-incidental it is now evident that the public did not get any time to react and there has been zero reaction, comment, condemnation from any of the pressure groups on the issue till today. All is well and calm for now and it is yet to be seen if the current office memo be a game changer indeed.
