Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, July 9: The authorities of Sher-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir (SKUAST-K) have thrown all rules to the wind and selected an ineligible candidate for the position of contractual lecturer in the Department of Veterinary Parasitology.
In response to the RTI application moved by M J Ahanger, President ITI Employees Union, ITI Srinagar, the Public Information Officer of SKUAST-K said that Sawleha Qadir has been selected as contractual lecturer in the Department of Veterinary Parasitology. This is despite the fact that Sawleha does not posses National Eligibility Test (NET), the basic pre-requisite for the position of lecturer at any varsity.
Sawleha has been preferred over Maria Abbas who has qualified NET in 2002. In order to cover up for their wrong doing the SKUAST-K authorities have in the scoring sheet showed that Maria Abbas does not possess the NET. If she would have been given the due weightage of the NET, she would have easily made it to the final selection list of the contractual lecturer.
The score sheet of the candidates as provided by the PIO shows that while Sawleha has attained 74 marks, Maria has scored 73.50 marks. Two other candidates Irshad Ahmad and Tazeen Nazir didn’t appear in the interview and as such they were shown absent in the score sheet.
The story of the discrimination does not end here. Despite being the first author of two international publications, Maria has lost to Sawleha who is the fourth author of some publications. To her credit Maria has four models while as there is nothing like that with Sawleha.
Sawleha has got five marks for being the fourth author of the publications, while as Maria, the first author of two international publications has scored 1.50 marks.
Despite being the topper at the BVSc and MVSc levels, Maria does not figure in the selection list. In the score sheet it has been written that Maria has scored 20 and 30 marks respectively at BVSc and MVSc levels while as the selected candidate has obtained 17 and 27 marks out of 25 and 35 marks respectively.
The SKUAST-K authorities in order to push through their blue-eyed candidate changed the rules as far as weightage of viva-voice (interview) is concerned. For their own convenience they changed the maximum marks criteria for this year’s interview from 20 to 25. In 2011 the maximum marks for interview were 20, but this time around it was 25.
Maria said that Vice-Chancellor, SKUAST-K, Professor Tej Partap should take a note of the gross negligence so that the matter is set right. She said otherwise there is no fun of passing lectureship eligibility examinations like NET.
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