The universities in Hyderabad are facing a piquant situation as four out of five of them do not have regular Vice-Chancellors. The term of the incumbent at the fifth one is also due to expire on April 18.
It is a tragedy that Osmania University, which was established nearly a century ago, and has 52 departments of learning did not have a V-C for the last nine months. The affairs of the university were looked after by IAS officers in the Secretariat in charge of education – initially Mr. Vikas Raj and now Ms. Ranjeev R. Acharya, but they hardly had time to devote to academics. The latter is also the in-charge V-C of Ambedkar Open University which does not have a regular V-C like Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Hyderabad and Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFU). Another woman IAS officer is the in-charge V-C of JNTU-H. The V-C of Potti Sriramulu Telugu University will retire this week. Interestingly, four IAS officers were posted as in-charge V-Cs for JNAFU since the retirement of Pervaram Padmavathi two years ago.
Conflicting deeds
A strange paradox is seen in the handling of unemployment and recruitment undertaken by the Telangana government in the recent past. The conflicting deeds are becoming clearer with every passing day with the increasing unrest among unemployed youth, particularly those studying in universities and who are organised, compared to their counterparts outside.
While responding to a discussion on unemployment in the Assembly recently, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao stated that the government had no reservations about relaxing the age-limit by ten years for different categories of posts after consulting political parties. After all, he recalled, jobs were also crucial to the movement for separate Telangana. The Chief Minister’s statement revived hopes among the unemployed youth, particularly those whose age had crossed the upper limit in the eligibility criteria. At present, the maximum age for non-uniform services is 34 years, while it’s 25 years, 26 years and 28 years for different categories of uniformed services.
However, a recruitment notification issued by the PSU Singareni Collieries Company Ltd recently stumped everybody and dashed the hopes of the unemployed as it reduced the upper age limit for recruitment of junior assistants to 30 years from the previous 34.
No end to division row
Even as the Kamalanathan committee is grappling with the division of State cadre employees, the government is faced with the demand to transfer Andhra Pradesh employees working in Telangana. Last month, the government set up a committee to look into the representation of the Telangana Secretariat employees association to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to send back a large number of Andhra employees working in the Secretariat.
Emboldened by this, various Telangana employees organisations have come up with a fresh demand for removal of their Andhra counterparts working in offices of heads of departments and other government establishments outside the Secretariat. For this also, the government constituted a committee. The latter is expected to go into the service registers and school records of every employee before giving its report.
Though Andhra Pradesh is bifurcated there seems to be no end to the division row.
Light at the end of the tunnel
There is light at the end of the tunnel, so goes a popular adage. In the present context, it can be applied to the thousands of Village Revenue Officers (VRO) who have now been elevated to the post of Junior Assistant from the Record Assistant post.
VROs perform an important role in the revenue set-up in the districts. Right from verifying certificates to checking land records, VROs have about 50 different duties on their job chart. VROs are selected on merit basis after qualifying a written examination and interview. Despite bagging the post in a competitive atmosphere, they were in the cadre of record assistant, more or less equal to an office attender. However, the recent decision of the government to put them in the category of junior assistant has brought smiles to their faces. For they feel that at last, they have got recognition.
Reporting by N. Rahul,
B. Chandrashekhar,
J.S. Ifthekhar
and Asif Yar Khan
