Editor,
In the ongoing APCS fiasco, the government is yet to respond to the memorandum submitted by the Pan Arunachal Joint Steering Committee through the ANSU. The situation is so intricate that, if the government fulfils the demands of the aspirants, there are organisations and hundreds of selected officers who would be disappointed and the incumbent government would not be able to afford any risk of disappointing the CBOs and the influential officers when the next election is approaching. In the case of the PRC issue, the insecurities were from outsiders, but in this situation the fear is from the corruption within the home itself. It should be made known that we aspirants will not sit idle either; the delay and divide tactics are outdated. But keeping the time, money, and energy in mind, sooner or later the aspirants and the government must concede to a viable solution. We cannot go on protesting perpetually.
In this scenario, there can be three approaches.
Approach 1: The government terminates only the officers selected by any unfair means and conducts a new recruitment process for the vacant posts. This could be the easiest escape way for the government from this imbroglio. But we aspirants would never accede to this solution. The competition on these few posts would be folds more than the originally advertised vacancies. The rationality of re-conduction of the selection process weighs more than the re-conducting of a few posts.
Approach 2: The government terminates the whole batches just like the 2016 fiasco of the Manipur Public Service Commission and the 2016 case of the Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board. In both the cases, the Supreme Court upheld the cancellation of the whole recruitment process by the government. In the Delhi case, in its judgement, the bench said, “The constitutional values which undergird Articles 14 and 16 mandate that selection processes conducted by public authorities to recruit have to be fair, transparent and accountable.” Today the 2017 APPSCCE fiasco has not popped out suddenly. It had issues since the initial days. I would suggest everyone to watch the press briefing given by aspirants of 2017 APPSCCE on 31 October, 2022. Out of hundreds of candidates, only 46 percent (minority) turned up for the exam, from which some of them stopped writing the next exam when they saw their close friends and relatives in tears, and fellow aspirants being shot at with water cannons and beaten with police lathis. Someone might say that there was no unity amongst the aspirants themselves. But now we see that it was inevitable, because candidates like Minoty Borang and Opet Mibang already possessed the question papers and they might also have supplied the papers to other aspirants in order to include them in the pro-exam group. These people would anyhow risk their lives to attend the exam. The advantage of re-conducting the 2017 exam is that it would give a final justice to the deprived candidates and uphold the due process of law. The disadvantage is that the candidates who have cleared the exams through their sheer handwork would be victimised. Some of them might not even clear the prelims level because the patterns have changed and they are not in touch with the new syllabus.
Approach 3: The government terminates only the scandalous candidates and conducts new mass recruitments for Grade A posts of CO, DSP, etc, through the APPSC, excluding AE, JE, ADO, HDO, VO, etc, not less than 500 vacancies and Grade B, C, D posts not less than 800. The aspirants, the public and the incumbent officers would be on the same page to this approach. To make this possible, the government can go beyond the existing vacancies because in the recent decades many new districts have been created and they are yet to be filled with officers and staffs to their optimum capacity. The removal of officiated posts by junior ranked officers and promotions of APPSCCE recruited officers to higher ranks can also make a way for the generation of vacancies. Pragmatically speaking, the thirst for justice is fuelled by one’s lifestyle. Our demand for justice is pushed by our condition of unemployment and poverty. Keeping aside some exceptions, all of the protesters are deprived and unemployed aspirants or their parents. Mass recruitment only can meet the interest of all the stakeholders of this movement.
The commission should also make sure that no random candidate who has exhausted their UPSC attempt can take advantage of the loopholes in the state’s recruitment process.
The incumbent government should act judiciously and early on this matter before the aspirants, the public and the opposition shift their target from the APPSC to the CMO.
Kyagung Dafri