Evocative video puts spotlight on 24-yr wait for job
HYDERABAD: His feet are callused; the green slippers worn out from use. His hair is wild and unkempt. The orange dhoti has faded, and one torn end is dangling above his right knee. His 55-year-old body is underfed; a tattered shirt is barely masking the ribs jutting out of his chest -- that shirt was once white, now it’s discoloured by grime.
Things should never have been like this for Allaka Kedareshwar Rao.
In 1998, Rao was a 31-year-old full of vigour, on his way to becoming a teacher of Telugu in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh. And yet, as Rao waited and wilted, his appointment was stalled for twoand-a-half decades, caught in a vortex of multiple administrative orders, confusion, neglect, and bureaucratic legalese. And, cases filed to have it expedited shuttled incessantly between various tribunals and courts.
On Sunday, 24 years later, Rao was accosted by residents of his village of Peddaseedi in the Pathapadnam block of Srikakulam district in AP, close to the Odisha border. They told him that the Andhra Pradesh government published a list of 4,567 teachers who passed the examination in 1998, and would now be given teachers’ jobs. The news was both joyous and cruel. His clasped his hands, and in a video that has now gone viral across the state, said: “I am happy my name is there in the list at last. But what do I do with this job now?”
Back in 1998, the then unified Andhra Pradesh government issued notifications to fill 36,136 teacher posts across the state through district selection committees. The entrance process, conducted once in two years, included a written test and an interview. Rao’s success till then was hardearned; he wanted a government job, the holiest of grails, bringing with it a fixed salary, stability, status, and pension. “I had passed the written test twice earlier — in 1994 and 1996. But in 1998, I was finally selected. But all the court cases meant that I did not get a posting all these years,” Rao said.
E Sekhar, a vernacular reporter in Pathapatnam, said that Rao lives alone in a dilapidated house after his parents, both agricultural labourers, died in the last two decades. “After failing to get the teachers’ job, he ran a shop selling clothes in the village, but he could not sustain it long term,” Sekhar said.
Why the delay?
In 1998, the state government fixed a cut-off of 50 marks out of a total 100 for the general category, 45 for other backward classes (OBCS), and 40 for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and those that have disabilities for the written exam to select teachers. Those who got these marks
were called for interviews.
However, the cut-offs were too high, and only 18,000-odd candidates, or for about 50% of the vacancies, qualified. The government then issued another order reducing the cut-off marks by five across the board, so that more would make it for the interview round. The two orders created administrative chaos. In many districts, those who failed to make it to the interview initially, were given jobs after an interview, ahead of those who had higher marks. In the ensuing melee, only 25,000 posts were filled, and the other posts were kept on hold, to be filled up later.
The candidates who qualified for the interview with higher marks in the written test argued that they should be recruited first, and thus moved the
Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal in 1999. For 10 years, the case was argued in the Tribunal, which in 2009, gave orders stating that all those who had higher marks be appointed.
It was not immediately clear which of the two categories Rao belongs to -- the one with more than 50 marks who were guaranteed interview slots, or the ones who got in after the bar was lowered and then made it through the second round.
HT could not locate Rao on Sunday and Monday, and he doesn’t have a phone.
In 2009, the then state government moved the Andhra Pradesh high court challenging the tribunal order. “In 2011, a three-member bench of the high court, headed by justice G Raghuram, upheld the tribunal order and directed that the government rectify the errors in the recruitment process and give postings to all the eligible candidates,” said Kappala Srinivas, president of the ‘Struggle Committee of DSC-1998’.
The state government, however, continued to sit on the issue, and candidates moved the Supreme Court in 2013. It did not help, of course, that Telangana and AP were bifurcated in 2014, further complicating the process. In 2014, the Telugu Desam Party government headed by N Chandrababu Naidu appointed a committee of MLCS, all of whom were teachers, to resolve the matter. “At the same time, in Telangana, too, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao held a meeting with the representatives of our committee in 2016 and said he would look into our demands. We told him that in Telangana, around 1,700-1,800 qualified candidates are eligible for recruitment. But in that state, nothing has materialised,” Srinivas said.
In 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the order of the tribunal and the HC, directing both the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments to give jobs to teachers who had the higher marks. “Since then, the files pertaining to the recruitment of teachers had been languishing in official cupboards,” Srinivasa said.
Then, last week, the Jagan Mohan Reddy government cleared the file based on the SC’S order. An official of the state secretariat, said on the condition of anonymity that the state government was working out the guidelines on their appointment. In the meanwhile, the administration has released a list of 4,567 such teachers eligible for recruitment. Rao’s name was one among them.
A life derailed
The years after his stalled appointment saw his life being torn asunder. His parents died, and he was cut off by his two married sisters. After the failed shop, Rao then went from village to village on a rickety cycle — his only worldly possession from whose handlebars hung a torn bag with some clothes inside.
He hoped to sell these clothes, and when that endeavour failed, turned to begging. “There have been many times when he would spend days begging for alms and food on the streets. He never married,” said P Srinivas, a Peddaseedi resident who knows Rao.
E Sekar said,“When he could not get enough money, he would even sometimes go to schools nearby hoping he would be given food meant for students under the mid day meal scheme.”
YSR Congress party legislator T Kalpalatha Reddy, who was instrumental in bringing the issue to the notice of the government, said, “Injustice was done to the candidates during the recruitment process. We took it to the notice of the chief minister with the help of government advisor (public affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy.”
K Ramesh, a senior government official in the state information department, said Rao may not be alone. “His case is not an isolated one. Many of those who had qualified for jobs in the same year are in similar condition. The government’s decision has given them hope.”
But, as Rao asked, what is that hope worth?
Back in Peddaseedi, Rao is still going village to village on his bicycle in the hunt for subsistence -his name on a list meaning little till it brings pecuniary benefit. In one corner of his tattered white bag, under the pile of clothes he is still struggling to sell, is a sheaf of dogeared government papers and certificates from two-and-a-half decades ago.
“I always kept them because I hoped that my job would come through,” Rao said. Papers that are now testament to a life derailed.