In the letter the students expressed their disappointment, that the New Recruitment Policy (NRP) is a gross injustice to the students who devote their entire youthful years studying in colleges, even (most of them) outside of their hometowns (in the case of Ladakh) and would come back to the native state only to get a “contractual” job for seven years with no clearly mentioned remuneration plans.

 

Added to that there would be no job security owing to the fact that they would have to go all over again through some kind of a test to assess the “satisfactory” nature of their service. 

This vague nature of the Ordinance is prone to be interpreted by senior officials thus giving rise to nepotism, favoritism, bossism and corruption. The NRP formulated by your government is a violation of the reservation policies to the socially backward groups, enshrined in the Indian Constitution under Article 335, which claims that “Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes shall be taken into consideration in the making of appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of the state.” 

This worries us all because as we know, 89 percent of the total population of Ladakh belongs to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. The NRP also violates article 39(d) of the Indian Constitution, rightly pointed out by Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) Leh in his letter to you dated April 25th 2015, which assures “that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women.” Adding to the wounds of the Ladakhi youth the state Department of School Education came up with a long list of 114 odd promotion and transfer of 10+2 lecturers from Kashmir and Jammu regions on April 16th 2015 (Government Order No. 169-Edu of 2015), just three days prior to the state Cabinet’s approval of NRP, to Ladakh (36 and 78 numbers of them to Leh and Kargil districts respectively). This concerns us all because the NRP, if implemented in the near future, “both the gazette and non-gazetted posts shall be notified and recruited by the respective districts” as the state Education Minister explained. 

Therefore, the recent “unusual” mass promotion and transfer policy of the state government is not a coincidence but a well thought-out policy to malign the educated Ladakhi youth. In this regard, the All Kargil (Ladakh) Students’ Union Delhi (AKSUD) is running a mass signature campaign from student of Ladakh (apart from other modes of protest), and people from other walks of life who are concerned about this issue. We demand the NRP be revoked in the best interest of the people of the state in general and unemployed youths of the state in particular.

We also request you to stop the mass transfer policy of the 114 lecturers to Ladakh at the earliest, and allow the District Education Department to recruit the local youth, who are efficient and able with qualified degrees in hand. We have great hopes from the present government, under your able leadership, that you will not dishearten the unemployed youths of the state, which your party promised before going to polls last year.