Aizawl: Around 100 students and student body leaders gathered at the premises of the Assembly Secretariat on Friday shouting in unison, “Duhsaktu nei ve lo te tan – kan ding ve dawn,” which roughly translates to “We will stand for those who do not have anyone to show partiality to them.”
The protest, organised by Mizoram’s two apex student bodies, Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) and Mizo Students Union (MSU), aimed to highlight the alleged unfairness in a recruitment drive of the Mizoram Legislative Assembly House.
According to data accessed by the student union, 9 out of 11 recruits had direct links to officials at the Mizoram Legislative Assembly House, with one being a daughter of the Assembly House Speaker Lalrinliana Sailo. The advertisements for these job posts were put up only in two newspapers, Mizo Aw and Dingdi subscribed by a small population while larger newspaper publications were ignored. The student bodies suspect this gave way for the house officials to limit the number of applicants so they could filter out their favourites.
MZP President Lalnunmawia Pautu spoke to EastMojo saying, “The student body suspects that unfairness was practised in posts creation for UDC(Upper Division Clerk), LDC(Lower Division Clerk) and translator in the Assembly house. We have heard that these incidents have happened in the past in the assembly house recruitment but we cannot speak for the past. Now we have a strong voice because we believe we have the necessary evidence.”
He further mentioned that the government has stayed silent and they have received neither good news nor bad news from them, “Our demand is for them to cancel these posts and re-conduct the recruitment drive if they do not meet our demand we will fight till the end.”
The assembly house is a separate body and the exams and interviews are conducted independently from the state’s recruitment agency, Mizoram Public Service Commission. The interview and selection process is handled by the assembly house itself.
The applicants told EastMojo they were not surprised to see the results. An applicant said, “We were already aware that the Mizoram assembly house has been unfair in its recruitment since the past. Even the interviews were different from other job interviews we usually face. Even if we file an RTI we will not be able to detect the wrong as we will just get our answer paper. We cannot detect if the fault lies with the one who set the question paper or the one who evaluated it.”
A government official spoke to EastMojo on the condition of anonymity saying, “What has happened has been stated clearly, there was partiality and nepotism in the recruitment drive. This is not the first time it has happened, past assembly speakers have also recruited their family and friends every time there were vacancies during their respective tenures.”
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Commenting further on the unfair practices of the Assembly house in the past, a senior journalist told EastMojo, “In each term, the speakers recruited their family, for example, Hiphei recruited his granddaughter and so on. If you take a close study you will find many of them related to the speakers and officials in charge during their recruitment.”
The ‘about us’ section of the Mizoram Legislative Assembly website details its recruitment policy, writing, “As provided under Article 187 of the Constitution of India, Mizoram State Legislative Assembly has a separate Secretariat for the Legislature. The Recruitment and Conditions of Services are regulated by the Mizoram Legislative Assembly Secretariat (Recruitment and Conditions of Service Rules, 1995) Under these rules, the Speaker has full administrative and financial powers in respect of the Legislature Secretariat.”
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