Balancing act to pacify agitating Jammu
Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Aug 3: In an apparent attempt to make a balancing act, the State Government has ordered to reserve 49 posts of Assistant Professors for Dogri and 25 posts for Punjabi languages.
“In continuation to the Government order number 399-HE of 2017, dated 04-07-2017, 49 posts of existing 492 vacancies of Assistant Professors are hereby reserved for Dogri and 25 posts for Punjabi, ” says the order, which was issued today by the Department of Higher Education, J&K Government.
According to the order number 399-HE of 2017, dated 04-07-2017, sanction was accorded for conversion of 74 vacancies, out of 492 existing vacancies of Assistant Professor in Higher Education Department, as on date. While 49 vacant post of Assistant Professor were converted for Kashmiri Language/ Literature, 25 others were converted for Vocal/ Instrumental/ Classical Music.
Conversion of such a big number of vacancies of Assistant Professors for Kashmiri language and an exclusive reports by the Excelsior in this regard with inputs through official sources that the same has been done for facilitating introduction of Kashmiri Language in the Government run Colleges across Jammu division had invited a sharp reaction from various political and social organizations here.
While Jammu people were up in arms against the order on converting 49 posts for Kashmiri language and possible Government move of introducing Kashmiri in college across Jammu division, the Department of Higher Education went ahead with its agenda by issuing another controversial order.
According to this order, dated 01-08-2017, number 448-HE of 2017, sanction was accorded for introduction of Kashmir subject in Government Degree College Surankote from academic session 2017-18 and this news was again carried exclusively by the Excelsior in its August 3 edition.
In what can be termed as a balancing act to avoid further impetus to the anger of Jammu based organizations against the Government’s move, the Department of Higher Education came out with today’s order number 453 HE of 2017, dated 03-08-2017 for reserving 49 posts of Assistant Professors in Dogri and 25 in Punjabi.
However, the word ‘reserved’ still raises a doubt on intentions of those at the helm of affairs in Higher Education Department. Even as subject of the order mentions ‘Conversion of vacancies for Assistant Professors (Dogri) and (Punjabi) in Higher Education Department’, in details below, it says that ‘49 posts of existing 492 vacancies of Assistant Professors are hereby reserved for Dogri and 25 posts for Punjabi’.
However, the Minister for Education Altaf Bukhari, when contacted, sought to clarify that use of word ‘conversion’ or ‘reserved’ did not carry any difference as in case of both Kashmiri and Dogri as well as Punjabi, these posts are not going to be referred to the Public Service Commission till students for the respective subject are enrolled.
“Out of the existing vacancies of 492, these 123 posts of Assistant Professors are now reserved for these three languages only, 49 for Kashmiri, 49 for Dogri and 25 for Punjabi. Depending upon the enrollment of students, we can now engage Contractual faculty for these subjects, for which we should have a vacant post,” the Minister explained and reiterated that he wanted students to study the language of their own choice whether its is Urdu, Hindi, Kashmir, Dogri, Punjabi or Bodhi.
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