SSP ACB, 2 Directors, senior bureaucrats continue to remain in teachers’ seniority list for promotion as Botany Lecturers

Outdated J&K School Education Deptt struggling for updating its existence

VIVEK SHARMA

JAMMU: Strange it may sound but fact it is that the School Education Department has gone public in seeking objections for promoting teachers as Incharge Lecturers in the Botany stream notwithstanding some of the ‘eligible’ incumbents, figuring in the list circulated this week, ceasing to be staffers of education department and holding very important positions in the police and civil administration in Jammu and Kashmir.
Will anybody take the responsibility of not having updated the records of the J&K School Education Department for over two decades? Some of the staffers in the list have got selected or appointed in the various other departments long time back, as back as late nineties.
The seniority list of teachers for proposed promotion as Incharge Lecturers in Botany in School Education Department include a Senior Superintendent of Police, two Directors, Joint Directors, Special Secretaries to Government, Under Secretaries, inferring that the School Education Department has no clue about who’s who of its human resource, despite having a full-fledged wing equipped with whopping staffers, drawing hefty salaries.
Didn’t any of the staffers used common sense to find out the authenticity of the list? Why did they chose to push forward the obsolete list as a piece of paper but not a valid document? Is it job of the public or the stakeholders to update the outdated department?
These are the questions that should bother the administration as accountability and efficiency of Deptt is at stake.
Sources told STATE TIMES that the School Education Department has been very casual in its working. It has allegedly become an organisation of parasites and an establishment to mint money due to active presence of some black-sheep.
Making the mockery of the education system in J&K, it is no more a secret that the postings, promotions and top placements in the department remain subservient to considerations and exclusive domain of the blue-eyed. Mismanagement, favouritism and corruption has allegedly become tagline for the department that is unfortunately charged with the responsibility of shaping the destiny of youth, the future of the nation.
Shockingly, the School Education Department has sought the verified service details of the prospective Incharge Lecturers vide No: Edu-HRM/2022 dated May 18, 2022, signed by the Under Secretary to Government School Education Department (H&M Section) Civil Secretariat Mayank Sharma, JKAS, Under Secretary to Government, which reads “…I am directed to enclose herewith the list PG Masters/Teachers in the discipline of Botany regarding the subject cited above (Placement of PG Master/Teachers in the discipline of Botany) with the request to verify the service particulars of the incumbents and provide information regarding Present Place of Posting, Expired/Retired, Left the Department case/joined other discipline and drop out , if any. The information should this office within two days”.
Tracing some records pertaining to the past two decades, STATE TIMES found that in the list of 150 incumbents, Senior Superintendent of Police Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) Sandeep Wazir, stands at serial number 121 of the seniority list for proposed promotion. Director Finance ARI & Trainings Suresh Kumar Koul, ( S No 68), Joint Director, ICDS, Social Welfare Department Devinder Singh Katoch, ( S. No122), Jatinder Singh, Director, Floriculture, Jammu, ( S.No 75) ceased to be the members of the J&K School Education Department since the year 1999. Didn’t anyone in the department bother to update the list from time to time?
Similarly, many Special Secretaries and Under Secretaries also are in the proposed promotion list of Botany Lecturers.
According to well-placed sources, the computerization of the data of teachers, masters and lectures, was conducted when Suresh Kumar was Director School Education Jammu in 2000. Despite the fact, number of times fake promotions orders were issued from time to time by over-lapping and manipulating the seniority lists.
This time, the top hierarchy of the department has become pro-active to effect the promotions and order placements with some of the staffers under consideration include those who had left the department five to six years ago.
The department has a record of promoting fake Post Graduate degree holders as Lecturers and it had manifested in lodging of two FIRs with the then State Vigilance Organisation, now (Anti Corruption Bureau). The cases pertain to many fake degree holders in science discipline having been promoted as Lecturers despite the fact that the then J&K PG Teachers Association had strongly opposed the move.
After STATE TIMES’ expose, two FIRs were registered against two IAS officers, the then Directors School Education and the Chief Education Officers (CEOs) for their involvement in promotion of fake degree holder teachers as lecturers. However, the quantum of fraud was so huge that the ACB failed to compile the data till date to charge-sheet the case. Both the FIRs (29/15, 30/15), of year 2015, are still under investigations with the ACB.
Interestingly, the J&K UT School Education Department is currently under the administrative control of an Indian Forest Officer (IFS) B K Singh, designated as Principal Secretary, School Education Department.