In an appeal to the NSF, the state government Tuesday reminded the Federation about the August 12 meeting held between chief secretary Lalthara with NSF office bearers wherein the background and circumstances under which the decision was made to hold special recruitment of 10 EACs in the NCS for “backward/less represented tribes of Nagaland” was made.
In a letter addressed to NSF, state chief secretary Lalthara stated that he had explained to them, that the main reason was “great shortage” of NCS officers at the entry level, consequent upon the recent NCS cadre review, whereby a number of senior posts for NCS were created.
Lalthara stated that it resulted in promotion of large number of NCS officers to higher level posts,with the largest number taking place from EAC to SDO level.
In addition he said, the recently enacted Nagaland Retirement from Public Employment Act 2009 resulted in large number of senior NCS officers retiring in one go. He said the resultant promotions against vacancies arising due to retirement created more vacancies at the lowest entry level of EAC.
Lalthara said out of 115 posts of EAC, as many as 74 were vacant while most of the EAC outposts in Eastern Nagaland remained unmanned. He said the unmanned outposts were caused by reluctance of many officers to be posted to these remote and difficult areas. The other reason for conducting special recruitment drive was due to less representation of backward tribes in government service as a whole.
He said the high level official committee which he headed, looked into ENPO memorandum dated November 25,2010 wherein backward tribes form Eastern Nagaland were “actually getting less representation in government service, in relation to their population, or to the percentage of posts reserved for them”.
Lalthara cited the latest census indicating that people from Eastern Nagaland made up 25% of the state’s population while their actual share in government service was about 17% only, the same percentage if posts recruited during the past 20 years through NPSC was taken.
On the issue of inclusion of Rengma tribe in the special recruitment drive, Lalthara said that during the 15-year period from 1990-2004, no candidate from the tribe was selected by the NPSC for NCS and NPS.He said representation from Rengma tribe was particularly low even today as only four NCS officers were currently in service, which was only 1.4% of NCS whereas the Rengma population was 2.4% of Nagaland’s population.
He said inclusion of Rengma in the current recruitment was only as a one-time compensatory measure.
Lalthara admitted absence of administrative officers in many remote outposts which was not conducive for good and effective governance. He said special recruitment was decided since the state government has been receiving repeated demands from public of these areas for early posting of officers in the areas.
He also disclosed that the state government had earlier toyed with the idea of induction/lateral entry to NCS at EAC level to tide over the shortage but did not do so in view of lack of enabling rules and regulations for such induction.
Lalthara reminded NSF of his assurance that the special recruitment drive will be a one-time exercise which will not be repeated.
He also assured that the special recruitment policy and processes will be planned and geared up in such a way as to take care of future vacancies through normal recruitment through state civil service exams every year.
He also assured NSF that the reservation policy would be reviewed after the 2011 census data was available, so that the government would seriously consider the issue of exclusion of the creamy layer from its purview and suggestions for automatic conversion of a reserved vacancy into general vacancy in the event a backward tribe candidate qualified on merit.
In view of the above explanations, Lalthara appealed to the NSF against opposing the special recruitment drive, especially since advertisements for the 10 posts were already issued by the NPSC as stopping the process at this stage would cause inconvenience to both the government as well as the intending candidates.
For More Updates, follow us on 
and 