Shillong, Apr 8: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said the government is engaging with the Centre for immediately resolving the ongoing crisis to ensure the smooth functioning of the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU).
“I am engaging with the government of India. I am engaging with the Education minister on a time-to-time basis and updating him and requesting him to find a way to resolve this. They are doing their best and I again urge everybody that yes there could be complications but we need to come together to resolve it in the larger interest of students,” Sangma told reporters.
On the continued protest against the incumbent vice chancellor of the university, the CM said, “We are concerned about the issue in NEHU and mostly I am concerned about the students. There are issues from both sides. We have tried to understand those issues, tried to reach out to different stakeholders either me directly or somebody in the system (government) and try to see how we could resolve the issue so that NEHU can function in a smooth manner.”
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“NEHU is an autonomous body and directly functions under the Education Ministry. Therefore, all these complications are there where state government it is difficult to openly intervene and do in certain ways but the state government is not competent authority to officially to intervene. We are very concerned. We are not directly intervening but we are engaging. We are talking to people.”
He further stated, “I have personally gone to meet the students and of course, some of them took it otherwise when I said I have not come as CM because I wanted to share with them, I have come as a leader, as a citizen and person who would like to help. I cannot be there from a government perspective as technically we don’t have the authority to intervene into day-to-day functioning but we can engage so my purpose is engagement so I am engaging unofficially and officially with certain staff and faculty from other political leaders and – we are finding a way we are trying to see how we could bring different stakeholders together to resolve this issue but we are not very sure how things are moving.”
(Newmai News Network)