Job reservations -- Govt panders to SC/STs

Job reservations -- Govt panders to SC/STs
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, MARCH 29: In a significant move aimed at mollifying the SC/STs, the Government today decided to introduce an amendment bill to waive the 50 per cent ceiling, set by the Supreme Court, to clear the backlog in jobs reserved for this category.

Once this bill is passed, the number of vacancies filled up by candidates belonging to the SC/STs and the OBCs in a particular year is likely to go beyond the 50 per cent ceiling imposed by the Supreme Court.

The Government decision, the official spokesperson said, is in response to the demand by various SC/ST associations that the 50 per cent ceiling should not be applied to backlog vacancies. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had in March last year assured Parliament that the Government would bring suitable amendment in this direction.

The Bill, which seeks to amend Article 16 of the Constitution, would enable the Government to consider the backlog in vacancies as a separate class and it would not fall under the 50 per cent ceiling set by the apex court in its judgement in the Inder Sawhney Vs Union Of India case.

In pursuance of this and other judgements of the apex court, the department of personnel and training had on August 29, 1997 issued a memorandum stipulating that the 50 per cent ceiling, to be observed while filling up government posts in a year, would include the backlog vacancies.

But this provision will change after the Government introduces the bill in the post-recess budget session.

``The backlog will be treated separately and will not be clubbed with any fresh recruitment drive,'' Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told reporters after the Cabinet meeting here this afternoon.

The reservation policy existing before August 29, 1997, stipulated that the vacancies reserved for the SCs/STs, which could not be filled up through direct recruitment because of the non-availability of suitable candidates, were treated as ``backlog vacancies.'' For the purpose of determining the 50 per cent ceiling, the current reservation as well those which were carried forward were taken into consideration. The backlog reservation was treated as a distinct group and excluded from the 50 per cent ceiling.

In other words, the backlog reservation was filled up either through routine recruitment in subsequent years or by holding special recruitment drives and the number of such backlog vacancies was in addition to the 50 per cent reservation every year for all categories (SC, ST and OBC) taken together.

The Supreme Court judgement of 1997 altered this position.