STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Urging upon the Education Minister to take cognisance of the repeated complaints of irregularities, omissions and commissions in the transfers of teachers and masters in Jammu Division, Harsh Dev Singh, JKNPP Chairman and former Education Minister, sought a probe into all such whimsical transfers through vigilance or some special investigation team.
He called for the personal indulgence of the Education Minister so as to ascertain the allegations of mass corruption in such transfers particularly those made in district Udhampur in utter violation of all transfer norms and in complete circumvention of the transfer policy announced by the government with a great fan fare.
Insisting for an impartial probe, Harsh alleged that the concerned officers had brazenly flouted all norms and procedures and effected highly irregular transfers which had drawn widespread condemnation and resulted in huge resentment amongst the teaching community.
He expressed his dismay that the transfer list of masters revealed large scale ‘zero’ km transfers of masters in blatant violation of transfer norms which were reported to have been made on monetary considerations. He said that such weird transfers had fully exposed the hollow claims of the Education Department where transfer mafia still had its hegemony.
He said the list of transfers of masters indicated that the much proclaimed transfer policy had been thrown to winds by the reckless officers irrespective of the prescribed guidelines.
In a bizarre case, he said the CEO Udhampur transferred his son pre-maturely in utter abuse of his position and authority. He pointed out that the CEOs son, Pankaj Bhardwaj, who was posted in HS Roun-Domail in the vicinity of Udhampur city was transferred barely after a few months of stay to Girls HSS Udhampur in the city without fulfilling the mandatory requirement of administrative approval.
His transfer to a girls school had further antagonised the teaching community of the district in view of questionable credentials of the teacher who had faced the wrath of public and students of a girls school for having misbehaved and used obscene language with females and having written licentious and lewd letters to the female teachers of the school, rued Harsh.
Lambasting the Education Department for dealing ruthlessly with the honest masters, he divulged that recently a deputation of masters on conditions of anonymity apprised him that they were transferred more than 100 Kms from their respective places of residence as they refused to fulfill the illegitimate demands of middlemen involved in the transfer process despite the fact that the remote areas they belonged to also faced acute deficiency of teaching staff.
Making a particular mention of Ramnagar in district Udhampur, he pointed out that there were several cases pertaining to pre- mature transfers which had brought the education to teeter on the brink in the entire Tehsil.
He said that a female teacher on the verge of retirement and having medical issues was transferred to a school around 40 kms from her residence with a walking distance of around 10 kms.
“The Education Deptt for the first time had earned notoriety and obloquy for such mischievous, manipulative and fraudulent transfers witnessed in the present regime”, said the former Education Minister. He urged upon the Education Minister to take cognizance of the large scale irregularities in such transfers and order vigilance or SIT probe into the whole gamut of transfers. He also demanded to keep all such transfer orders in abeyance until the final outcome of the investigation.
