State Education Minister Thaneswar Boro, who faced a barrage of questions on the issue in the State Assembly on Tuesday, simply said he would have to consult the Chief Minister before deciding to table the Manoharan Committee report which was submitted to the Government two years ago.

The AGP has been accusing the Congress of appointing several thousand school teachers by flouting norms and without taking financial sanction from the Financedepartment, and the issue has been taken to court several times.The over-appointment of teachers has led not only to anomalies in the education system, but has also cost the State exchequer heavily, with the State Government perennially remaining unable to pay them salaries.

More than 2,200 teachers in the State's middle schools have not received salaries since November last year due to the irregular manner in which they were appointed, Boro told the Assembly on Tuesday evening.

Boro also informed that while some schools did not have adequate number of teachers in comparison to number of pupils, some schools had up to twenty teachers against the requirement of just three or four.Dilip Kumar Saikia, senior AGP member, for instance, informed the Assembly that in Dhemaji district alone, as many as 732 teachers were appointed against twenty posts during the previous Congress regime.

In Lakhimpur district on the other hand, about one thousand school teachers were appointed by the previous regime at a timewhen there was not a single vacancy, Saikia told the House while demanding tabling of the Manoharan Committee report.

Appointing teachers against posts created under Operation Blackboard too has landed Prafulla Kumar Mahanta's Government in trouble. In 1994-95 for instance, 8,153 primary school teachers were appointed by the Assam Government under the scheme.

But once the eighth plan period was over, the State Government was asked by the Centre to accommodate these teachers under the State plan.Despite the over-appointment of school teachers by the erstwhile Congress regime during 1991-96, several hundred posts are still lying vacant in different districts, with Boro informing that most of these vacancies were in the rural areas.

In 13 of the State's 23 districts, posts of as many as 1,269 high school and higher secondary school teachers are currently lying vacant, while the number of primary and middle school teachers stood at 2,815 and 1,408 respectively.

Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta's homedistrict Nagaon has the highest number of 242 vacancies in the primary school level, followed by Jorhat with 195, Boro has revealed.The quality of school teachers appointed by the previous regime too is noteworthy. In Hojai sub-division, represented by senior Congress leader Ardhendu Kumar Dey, for instance, of the 24 graduate teachers appointed, six are third-divisioners.