Legal notice to VC

SHILLONG, JUNE 27: The North Eastern Hill University Teachers’ Association (NEHUTA) has served a legal notice to the University’s vice chancellor Prof SK Srivastava for allegedly tampering minutes of Executive Council meeting.

“We have served a legal notice to the VC asking as to why no criminal proceeding would be initiated against him for manipulation and tampering of the EC minutes to misguide the MHRD and the office of the Visitor of NEHU,” NEHUTA president Prof XP Mao said in a statement issued hereon Tuesday.

The NEHUTA members have also boycotted a meeting convened by the VC today in protest against his brazen defiance of the Act and Statues of the University.

According to them, the general meeting of all the teaching and non-teaching employees of the University was convened by the VC without any agenda, which was highly irregular and improper.

“During the meeting, the VC informed the virtually empty house that he had decided to discontinue the payment of HASA to the employees of the University with effect from June 14,” Prof Mao said.

He said the VC has been stubborn to discontinue an allowance enjoyed by the employees of the University by virtue of a statutory provision in the form of OE 10 of the NEHU ordinance since January 1995.

According to him, the recent MHRD letter, which was in reply to a manipulated minutes of the Emergent Executive Council meeting held on May 15, was used as an alibi by the VC to repeal the ordinance OE 10.

“Although the VC had admitted to the Press of having committed an ‘inadvertent mistake’ by sending the manipulated minutes, he had refused to take corrective measures to communicate the truth to the MHRD and the office of the Visitor,” he said.

Accusing the VC of being hell bent to please some MHRD bureaucrats to gain some brownie points to serve his personal agenda, Prof Mao said, “By repealing the HASA the VC has initiated an arbitrary exercise of nullifying a statutory provision of the University without following the procedures established by the law.”

He said the university is reeling under development paralysis for a long time with both infrastructure and academic growth of the university coming to a virtual standstill adding there is no sufficient hostel for the students and half of the faculties are staying in rented houses.

As per the UGC regulation 2010, clause 6.3.1, the university is under obligation to process and complete CAS in every six months.

The NEHUTA president however alleged that the VC has been dilly dallying ever since he had joined the university to begin the process of CAS promotion of the teachers who are languishing without any career growth for more than four years leading to deep frustration and lack of motivation among the faculty members causing huge impact on the overall academic climate of the university.

“The VC has unceremoniously exposed himself as a ‘pathological manipulator’ of official documents of the statutory bodies of the university as on several earlier occasions he had taken recourse to similar tactics,” he said.

On the matter of Higher Academic Grade (HAG) of Professors, Prof Mao said that the VC was involved with similar goof up when the matter was still sub-judice leading to the subsequent withdrawal of a number of EC resolutions citing the similar refrain that it was an ‘inadvertent mistake’.