By- Pauliansaun Touthang,
New Delhi
Picture a young man in his early thirties, hopeful in life, hardworking and reasonably successful posted with a central PSU. It is the early parts of 2017 and he contemplates his career choice. Having cleared the MCSCCE 2017 he must now resign from his job if he is to take up state civil service. Having litigations against the exam by some candidates was a clear sign of risk, but finally when the case was disposed, he decided that it was worth changing his career, after all who won’t want to serve his home state, and since believed that future cases will not affect genuine and innocent candidates he had little to fear, perhaps if he had some experience of the nature of civil laws he won’t have been that naive. Little does he realize what lies ahead, and how his job would be subject to outcome of future litigations, ultimately leading to termination. Fast forward 4 years and now the man is a shadow of his former self, living insolvent in penury unable to meet his loan obligations and living expense. He regrets having opted to join state service, having put faith on a constitutional body, having gotten married and having taken loan for the same, having to become a father, all coming together as he is plunged into deep distress, social stigmatization and mental trauma. A bleak future lies ahead where his age limits his scope for finding new employment, and a vacuum of nearly three years behind them. This is not a peculiar case, but typically the common fate of those unfortunate young men and women who cleared the MCSCCE 2016, but were doomed because of numerous ‘misdeeds’ (as noted in the judgement) of the Manipur Public Service Commission (MPSC), a constitutional body that exist solely to conduct such recruitment exams but somehow is much incapable. No one would want to be in the shoes of these unfortunate terminated officers. Surely not only those few selected candidates who choose not to take up state service, or who eventually left the job for other services, but even those who were not in the final list of MCSCCE 2016 must be thanking their stars to have been spared such a traumatic experience.
What is confounding now is, right in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, the MPSC has hurriedly announced to conduct the 2016 Mains exam afresh. To a layman, the expectation was, the CBI investigation would charge sheet and penalize whoever was involved in the MPSC scam first, and thereafter with due compliance of the directions of the Hon’ble High Court such as making necessary amendments to its rules and regulation, adopting system of moderation and scaling etc, the main exam would be conducted afresh. The judgement notes in page 149 that ‘It is the right time for the MPSC or for that matter, its staff or officials to be penalized for their misdeeds which they have been doing for the last many years and if not penalized now, they would continue to do so in future at the cost of public interest and public money’, in page150 that MPSC ‘miserably failed to discharge its duties and functions as mandated in the Constitution of India. It would like to continue holding examinations, only in name, with a half baked rules so that it could manipulate it’. Yet MPSC appears to be back to its old self and going about with the same ‘business as usual’ approach, like it has done nothing wrong. The disastrous fate of unfortunate candidates whose lives are irreparably damaged seems to have no bearing in the conscience of the high ranking officials of the MPSC, as it seeks to go on another uncertain and risky exam. In such circumstances MPSC exams should perhaps be notified with a warning making aspirants aware that MPSC may ruin their life and career without being accountable.Necessarily the people of Manipur deserves closure, it is not just aspirants that have suffered because of the MCSCCE 2016 fiasco, the whole state has been shamed besides suffering huge loss of public fund that has gone into the conduct of exams, training and salary of the terminated officers. Therefore the culprits must be held accountable; there would not be an offence without an offender.
Interestingly the very selected candidates, who were terminated from service and rampantly vilified (with distasteful name callings like #huranba82, #corrupted, ‘deserving to be spat upon’ etc) are in fact voicing that the CBI investigation be allowed to be completed first,and pointing out that MPSC have not yet complied with the directions of the court. Anyone who is aware of the MCSCCE 2016 fiasco would not have expected this from the selected candidates, since they have been painted as corrupt and allegedto be beneficiary of manipulation by MPSC.People expected that those who campaigned against the MCSCCE 2016 to be much more vocal and come up in arms against the exam notice since MPSC has not yet complied with the directions of the Hon’ble Court. This appears to be a strange anomaly in the narrative. It needs to be asked whether all the campaigns were solely aimed at re-exam, or was it truly aimed at making MPSC transparent and accountable? The saga for a clean and fair MPSC continues.
