Arjun’s new arrow

HRD Minister Arjun Singh has finally found a weapon to target his predecessor Murli Manohar Joshi. It has now been found that Joshi had hire...

HRD Minister Arjun Singh has finally found a weapon to target his predecessor Murli Manohar Joshi. It has now been found that Joshi had hired the services of a private agency to hire KVS teachers. In fact, Singh’s bureaucrats were quite surprised by the degree of freedom that was given to the agency to choose the teachers.

There is also the view that there was no option if the teachers — numbering more than 1,500 — were to be hired centrally. The ministry does not have the necessary wherewithal to carry out such huge recruitment, so the help of a private agency was a must. But the decision to centralise the recruitment process also shows that Joshi did not repose too much trust in the regional offices of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.

But now the ministry is in a spot of bother. What does it do with the 1,571 teachers whose names were pasted on the KVS website after they were selected by this agency.

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The private company called AOK is Delhi-based. It appears that during Joshi’s tenure, the ministry had floated a tender to decide on the agency. AOK responded with the lowest bid — Rs 1.25 crore. The company had implemented its task in a systematic manner — printing advertisements, holding countrywide examinations and keeping contact with all applicants. The ministry checked past records and found that recruitment tests were held countrywide by regional KVS offices.

In 1992, a government-appointed high power committee looking into the recruitment procedure had suggested the tests be centralised and procedure for hiring teachers be controlled by Shastri Bhavan. Soon after NDA came to power, Joshi’s HRD ministry decided to accept the recommendation of the previous Narasimha Rao regime committee and accordingly asked EDCIL — a government organisation — to carry out the selection of KVS teachers. Later, when EDCIL was found to be incapable of holding such an elaborate examination, the responsibility was passed on to a private company.

Now, the Government is in two minds. The question is whether government employees should be hired by private agencies. There is also the fear that these teachers would go to court if the ministry took a strong view against the selection exercise. What is also true is that legally, the selection process in incomplete because the teachers have not been officially given letters, their names only appear on the websites.