Shillong, Jan 10: The state government has regularised the services of another 850 plus employees appointed on adhoc basis against the sanctioned posts.
The much-awaited decision was approved at the first Cabinet meeting of the year chaired by the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma at Sohra on Friday.
In 2002, the government had regularised over 3000 adhoc employees, who were appointed pre-2007, in pursuant to a Supreme Court directive.
Sangma however said there were a large number of adhoc employees, who were appointed before the 2007 cut-off date, were missed out during the exercise that was done in 2022.
“There were still about 800 or 850 people as per our list, who were missed out during the approval given by the cabinet (in 2022)…So the government today has decided to regularise their appointments. We have now added those 850 plus to that list (of over 3000 adhoc employees), who are missed out during the approval given by the cabinet,” he added.
Further, the chief minister informed that there are no financial impact in terms of salaries since these employees were appointed on an adhoc basis against the sanctioned posts and were receiving their salary at scale.
He announced, “But these employees will get pension benefits in the future and they are now regular employees. Implication will be from the post-retirement point of view but currently they are already receiving the scale which any employee would get for that particular post. The adhoc appointments were against the sanctioned post and hence the money is already going to them.”
“There are seven (such employees) who have even passed away but then the pension benefits will be given to them. This is the beauty of this decision,” Sangma added.
Asked, the chief minister said, “Procedures were not followed but we can’t blame anybody right now but we need to resolve it. Based on the Supreme Court order, we got the opportunity to regularise this particular section but this cannot be done to all. Adhoc appointments are not legal technically speaking and hence we have informed all the departments that this cannot happen in the future and that is why now all the posts that are there, if you noticed, we are going for massive recruitments in all departments, DSCs, new recruitment boards have been constituted to ensure recruitment happens – so all these procedures are in place.”
“As I said this is a one time measure for employees, who are appointed against sanctioned posts pre 2007,” he reiterated.
