GUWAHATI: The Assam government will set up a State College Services Recruitment Board (SCSRB) to centralise the selection process of principals and assistant professors in provincialised colleges and government model colleges across the state.
This was revealed by state education minister Ranoj Pegu while replying to a starred question from AIUDF MLA Ashraful Hussain on the floor of the State Assembly on Thursday.
The state has a total of 8,590 teachers and 3,500 non-teaching employees in different colleges of the state. The total number of students in different colleges is 4,44,630.
"There are 2,500 pending cases in the Gauhati High Court over the selection and appointment of assistant professors in different state colleges. The government could not complete the assistant professors' selection and appointment process in the past three years," Pegu informed the House.
"The government has to change the policies in the appointment of assistant professors from time to time due to the court interventions," he said.
“We are introducing a Bill in this session of the House to set up a separate board for selection and appointment of principals and assistant professors in colleges,” said Pegu.
“We have already frozen the selection process of principals and assistant professors in the colleges. We asked the provincialised colleges that have already published the advertisement for faculty recruitment to complete the selection process as soon as possible. No fresh advertisement will be published without the authority's approval,” the minister said.
“Due to many pending court cases, we cannot complete the selection process. Therefore we decided to centralise the selection process. Now the selection of principals, assistant professors, and non-teaching staff will be conducted by a selection board instead of the college governing boards,” he said.
According to the Bill, the director of higher education will appoint teaching and non-teaching posts in the colleges based on the selection and recommendations made by the SCSRB.
The board, which will have a term of two years, will have a chairperson not below the rank of the principal secretary, a vice chancellor of any of the existing state universities, a senior administrative officer not below the rank of commissioner and secretary, a college principal, an expert from the field of finance or entrepreneurship, and two subject experts as members.
The secretary of higher education will be the member-secretary. The recruitment board will conduct the examination and test of interviews for the selection of candidates such as principals, assistant professors, and such other posts, as well as non-teaching employees such as librarians, assistant librarians, junior assistants, peons, and such other posts of colleges, based on the selection following the procedure as may be prescribed in the regulations. The government will nominate the chairperson and the members.
The minister informed the House that 640 posts of assistant professors are lying vacant in various provincialised colleges of the state.
ALSO READ | Faculty Recruitment In Assam's Provincialised Colleges To Be Completed At The Earliest
