Nadda promises NEIGRIHMS panel, no hiring till issues settled: KSU

Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda has assured the Khasi Students' Union (KSU) that a committee will be set up to examine policy disputes at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) in Shillong, and that no recruitment will take place there until those issues are settled, the union said on Saturday.

KSU general secretary Reuben Najiar, who was part of the delegation that met Nadda in New Delhi, told reporters the minister had promised to try to resolve the matter within a month, Shillong Today reported.

What the minister assured, according to KSU

According to Najiar, the proposed committee will look at reservation at NEIGRIHMS, the institute's demand for Institute of National Importance (INI) status and other questions that have a legal dimension. He said the minister told the delegation that recruitment would stay on hold until these were resolved.

Najiar said the dispute had been pending for 17 months and that the stalled recruitment was hurting health services. He said the minister had recently held a governing council meeting with the NEIGRIHMS authorities and had promised to fast-track the matter. The Union Health Ministry has not issued its own statement on the meeting.

The union's demands

In its memorandum, the KSU listed eight issues that it says have weakened the institute. Among them:

• restoring an 80:20 female-to-male ratio for Nursing Officer posts. The union said 175 of the 194 people selected in the 2023 NORCET recruitment were men, and cited a Central Administrative Tribunal ruling upholding 80% reservation for women under Article 15(3);
• dropping the requirement of two years' experience in a 50-bed hospital, which it said would shut out local nurses because most primary and community health centres in Meghalaya are smaller;
• restoring the upper age limit to 35 years for Nursing Officers and 27 for Pharmacists, from the current 30;
• scrapping the computer-based test conducted through an outsourced agency, which the union alleged was prone to malpractice and lacked centres in Meghalaya;
• removing excess EWS backlog vacancies and correcting OBC and SC reservation. The union argued that Meghalaya does not recognise any OBC category and questioned how OBC posts were advertised;
• granting INI status so the institute has autonomy similar to AIIMS and PGIMER.

The memorandum also accused the administration of failing to act firmly in complaints against some male staff. These are the union's allegations; NEIGRIHMS has not publicly responded to them.

About the institute

NEIGRIHMS, at Mawdiangdiang in Shillong, is an autonomous institute under the Union Health Ministry. It is one of the main referral and teaching hospitals for the North East, and its staffing affects patients from across the region.

NEInsider will update this story when the ministry announces the committee or its terms of reference.