STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Lambasting the State Education Department’s dilly dally approach regarding the adjustment of Masters promoted in February, 2014 by issuing incongruous and contradictory orders one after the other, Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman JKNPP and former Education Minister, on Tuesday urged upon the Education Minister to ensure justice to the aggrieved teaching staff who had been wrongfully deprived their legitimate rights for the last three years. He said that it was surprising that with 1,193 teachers having been promoted in Feb 2014, 165 were adjusted immediately on pick and chose thus doling out the most differential treatment to the remaining promotees.
It was in Feb 2017 that the adjustment orders of rest of the promotees were issued, he claimed, only to be implemented in part. He regretted that promotion orders of 581 Masters were further withdrawn by issuing a subsequent order on the ground that their degrees had been obtained through distance mode.
Upon resistance by the teachers, intellectual class including the Jammu University authorities, the controversial Govt order No. 66 was withdrawn by the Education Deptt but the much needed justice to the aggrieved promotees was still elusive, regretted Singh. He further deplored that despite cancellation of the order invalidating the distance mode degrees of Jammu University, the restoration of promotion of all genuinely promoted Masters was still awaited. He said that the State Education Deptt has rendered itself an object of ridicule and a laughing stock by replacing one order with the other with regard to promoted Masters who were awaiting adjustment for the last three years.
Harsh further claimed that while all the Master promotees of Kashmir after 2014 numbering around 900 had been adjusted immediately after issuance of promotion orders, the eligible candidates of Jammu region were subjected to large scale harassment besides doling out the most hostile discrimination to them.
Cautioning the Education Deptt to refrain from such biased and prejudicial treatment to Jammu youth, Singh called for retrospective promotional benefits to all such Master promotees of Jammu from the date their Kashmir counterparts were promoted.
