Shillong, March 14: The HYC has asked the state government to pass an official resolution in the Assembly to have a separate All India Services cadre for Meghalaya.
In a letter addressed to the chief minister Conrad Sangma, the HYC said the state is in urgent need of a separate cadre of the All-India Services: IAS, IPS and IFS by bifurcating the present Assam-Meghalaya joint cadre system.
This was in response to media reports that there is shortage of IAS officers in the state as admitted by the Chief Minister Conrad Sangma in Assembly on Monday.
“At present, only Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) and Meghalaya-Assam have a joint cadre system. If a small sate like Sikkim has its own cadre and our fellow NE states like Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland can have their own cadres, our state also deserves a separate cadre”, the HYC general secretary Roy Kupar Synrem said.
According to HYC, It is understood that having its own cadre will mean that the officer has to live in the state permanently for his/her entire career and he/she has to become familiar with the state’s language, culture, administration and other facets. This will ensure his/her loyalty and long time dedication to the state as he/she has to start and end his/her career in the state.
Having a joint cadre system also affects governance as the full strength of the officers may not be allotted /assigned to the state as is evident at present and this in turn will leave the state and its people to suffer, the HYC said.
Once an IAS Officer is allotted to the state, he/she is bound to serve the state for an entire career unless he/she goes on interstate deputation or Central government deputation, both of which are temporary and the officer has to return to the home state.
The HYC felt that although successive state governments had made efforts to impress upon the Central government for bifurcation of the joint cadre with Assam, nothing substantial has come out of these discussions, the latest attempt being in 2019 when the present government had written to the Centre, urging the latter to consider a separate cadre for Meghalaya with the hope that the state will see more IAS officers in future. However, nothing has materialised. “In order to further give a force of the people’s wish for the demand, we feel that a resolution to this effect should be brought and passed by the state Assembly impressing upon the Centre to bring an Amendment to the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 for creating a separate IAS cadre for Meghalaya”, the HYC added.
