After chairing the meeting, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said such departmental examinations, which normally were conducted by the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) will now be conducted here in Meghalaya through the MPSC.
“Of course, the syllabus will be more oriented obviously towards matters that are regarding the state and obviously we’ll also see more usage and the options of using the languages of Meghalaya which is Khasi and Garo – so these kinds of options will be there for the conduct of these departmental exams,” he said. “These are for the IAS probationers of the Assam Meghalaya joint cadre and the allotted to Meghalaya segment will be having departmental exams in Meghalaya,” he added.
Sangma further informed that the cabinet has also decided to group the posts carrying the same scale of pay with similar qualifications in one advertisement. He said today MPSC has to conduct different exams and selection processes for different departments and in the process what happens is it does take a lot of time because sometimes you have the same similar qualification, similar skills that are required or in a post that are carrying similar scale.
“So instead of having five six different exams for five or six different departments, the MPSC will club exams in one go and those that are having the same scale of pay with similar qualifications, the exams will be held together,” he said.
The cabinet has also approved the Meghalaya Prison Manual. The state for the last 50 years has been using the Assam Manual. However, a committee was constituted during the last two years for creating a prison manual for Meghalaya.
“With this manual coming up, the overall management of the prisons will also improve in the long run,” the CM said.
Meanwhile, the cabinet has also approved the amendment of the Meghalaya District Court Minister’s Service Rules 2020, which seeks to increase the age limit from 27 to 32 and the amendment of the Meghalaya Goods and Services Tax Act as per the decision taken by the GST Council to improve the compliance by different taxpayers. The amendment of the GST Act was adopted in terms of an ordinance which will later be presented in the next assembly session.
The cabinet further approved the amendment of the Meghalaya Prosecution Service rules 2016. Sangma said the amendment would include the regular appointments of public prosecutors in different districts and also overall streamlining of their performance in the working system of the prosecution and directorate. This was passed way back in 2008 but necessary steps to actually implement them and streamline the process were not taken.
“So this will be a very important step and we are sure that with this step we will be able to increase the overall conviction rate also in the state which will lead to the overall efficiency of the system,” he added.