GUWAHATI:
The Assam government is planning to set up a State College Services Recruitment Board to centralize the selection process of principals, and assistant professors in provincialised colleges, government model colleges and PDUM colleges across the state.
This was revealed by state education minister Ranoj Pegu while replying to a starred question from AIUDF MLA Ashraful Hussain on the floor of the State Assembly on March 30.
The state has a total of 8,590 teachers and 3,500 non-teaching employees in different colleges of the state.
The total number of students in different colleges is 4,44,630.
Given a staggering 2,500 pending cases in the Gauhati High Court over the selection and appointment of assistant professors in different colleges of the state, the government could not complete the selection and appointment process of assistant professors in the past three years, Pegu informed the House.
“The government has to change the policies in the appointment of assistant professors from time to time due to the court interventions,” he said.
“We are bringing a Bill in this session of the House to set up a separate board for selection and appointment of principals and assistant professors in colleges,” Pegu said.
“We have already frozen the selection process of principals and assistant professors in the colleges. We asked the provincialised colleges which have already published the advertisement for the recruitment of faculty to complete the selection process at the earliest. No fresh advertisement will be published without the approval of the authority,” the minister said.
“Due to a large number of pending cases in courts, we can not complete the selection process. Therefore we decided to centralize the selection process. Now the selection of principals, assistant professors, and non-teaching staff will be conducted by a selection board instead of the college governing boards,” he said.
According to the Bill, the appointment of both teaching and non-teaching posts in the colleges will be made by the director of higher education based on the selection and recommendations made by the Assam College Services Recruitment Board.
The board, which will have a term of two years, will have a chairperson not below the rank of the principal secretary, a vice chancellor of any of the existing state universities, a senior administrative officer not below the rank of commissioner and secretary, a college principal, an expert from the field of finance or entrepreneurship, and two subject experts as members.
The secretary of higher education will be the member-secretary. The recruitment board will conduct the examination and test of interviews for the selection of candidates such as principals, assistant professors, and such other posts, as well as non-teaching employees such as librarians, assistant librarians, junior assistants, peons, and such other posts of colleges, based on the selection following the procedure as may be prescribed in the regulations. The government will nominate the chairperson and the members.
The minister informed the House that a total of 640 posts of assistant professors are lying vacant in various provincialised colleges of the state. The total number of vacant sanctioned posts (non-teaching staff) is 834 9541 grade IV and 293 grade III).
The establishment of colleges, provincialisation, college service rules and management of colleges have been maintained under the provision of the Assam College Employees (Provincialisation) Act 2005 in addition to several gazette notifications published in time to time, the minister said.
He informed the House that Gauhati University has been accredited as a NAAC Grade A institution, while Dibrugarh University expired in 2022. Both Kumar Bhaskar Varma Sanskrit and Ancient Studies Universities and KK Handique State Open University are accredited as Grade B NAAC institutions.
Cotton University, Bodoland University, Rabindranath Tagore University, Bhattadev University, Madhadev University, Majuli University of Culture, Birangana Sat Sadhani Rajyik Viswavidyalaya, Assam Women’s University, Assam Rajiv Gandhi University of Cooperative Management, Assam Science and Technology University (ASTU) have not been accredited by the NAAC, he said.
A total of 197 provincialised colleges are accredited as either Grade A or Grade B by NAAC, while 140 colleges are yet to get NAAC recognition.
On a supplementary question, MLA Hussain alleged that most of the colleges are not providing quality education to the students due to which they were deprived of NAAC recognition.
The minister added that special awareness measures have been taken up by the state government to improve the quality of education in all colleges to get NAAC recognition.
To another question from Hussain, the minister informed the House that there are 92 venture non-provincialised colleges in the state.
“We are provincialising the services of the teachers instead of provincialising the institution after 2021. The provincialisation process depends on the number of students, not on teachers. There is no plan of the government for provincialisation of the venture colleges,” he added.