Despite persistent denial of the allegation that the State Government is run by bureaucrats as de facto rulers, here is a case that proves the charge to be ‘true’.
In the last Cabinet meeting held on Saturday, the Government increased the Block Grant salary of a section of college teachers and employees, allegedly due to the lobby of the beneficiaries in the power corridor.
The move has not only stoked large scale resentment among another section of teachers and employees who have been denied the benefit but also creates much ambiguity on the very concept of Grant in Aid (GIA) vis-Ã -vis Block Grant (BG).
It is because the GIA Policy 2007 and GIA Policy 2008 (which were in the shape of Block Grant) applicable to the 662- group of college employees and 488-group have turned out to be the same Block Grants despite repeated amendments and CM’s historic intervention, thanks to a few bureaucrats who want their hegemony to continue even overriding the CM.
The Chief Minister in 2017 had taken a historic step by announcing that the Block Grant as such was repealed and the old GIA was re-implemented, yielding a big relief to not just thousands of agitating employees but to the whole State which saw prolonged agitations by the employees of the 662-group and 488 –group college teachers and employees.
However, long after, the decision of the CM has failed to take the BG employees into confidence as the darker side of the GIA Policy of 2017 and 2018, after their notification in the Gazette, came to be known, which denied service conditions, pay and perks, besides post retirement benefits as used to be given to the beneficiaries under old GIA policies till 1994. The draft makers at the instance of some influential bureaucrats made the two policies turn out to be old wine in new bottle, which was against the tone and tenor of the CM’s big announcement. Most shockingly, while nobody paid heed to the frustrations of the beneficiaries, the CM too paid a deaf ear. Subsequently, the State Government implemented these employees under the 7th pay commission scale of pay with several distortions retrospectively from January 1, 2022. Though there was a hype and hoopla over the 7th pay, in actuality, it was not the 7th pay.
The whole idea was to keep these employees under the same Block Grant for all times to come. The latest machinations by some top Babus also will create more disturbances in the higher education sector by discriminating one section against the other and make job regularisation demand by these employees a wild goose chase.