Regularization Row...

Mohammed Younus / Hyderabad : Controversy over the State government’s decision to regularise contract employees is drawing flak from student community following which government seems to be in a fix over the implementation of its popular pre-poll promise. As of now, the State government is firm on the decision and said that it had fulfilled the poll promise given to the people before elections. But the legal tangles may cause an obstacle in the implementation.

The controversy over the issue has been escalating with the growing protests by the student groups opposing the government’s decision. Student leaders expressed their apprehensions that if government regularises the contract employees it would hamper their chances of employment. Government sources said that it had only announced the decision which involved several modalities. Ultimately, all contract employees would not come under the ambit of the scheme, opined a senior official.

Telangana Non-Gazetted Officers’ Central Union president G Deviprasad Rao said that State government would not move ahead blindly with the scheme. He said that the performance, eligibility, qualification among other criteria would be examined before regularisation. “Out of around 35,000 contract employees working in various departments several of them would be cut short after verifying their appointment, qualification and other criteria,” he added. On the other hand it is a non-issue for several student unions as they allege that the latest anti-government protests were orchestrated and flamed by some political parties. 

Telangana Students Unions JAC convener D Balraju Yadav said that there were large number of contract employees in education, municipal administration and healthcare sectors. Defending government’s stand, Balraju said that it would not simply go ahead but all the needed qualifications would be assessed before the regularisation. “With this filtration only few thousand contract employees may be regularized. The other students need not worry as state government has already promised to create jobs for the educated,” he said. As per the data available with Telangana Employees Union leaders, there are around 1.5 lakh vacancies in government departments. 

The number of contract employees was somewhere around 32,000 to 35,000. Education, irrigation, municipal administration, health care and revenue department have the more number of contract employees. Moreover, as per Act 2 of 1994 and a directive of Supreme Court no government is allowed to regularize the contract employees. Regularization was done in corporations and semi government departments but not in government departments, said a senior official in the education department. The objective behind agitating university students was to abolish the regularisation of gazetted posts as it would amount to the contempt of court and damage the chances of highly educated unemployed youth.