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| JSC Okays Bill to embargo inter-district recruitments | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, July 8: The Joint Select Committee of the both Houses of state legislature has approved, with amendments, the controversial and regressive Bill seeking to ban inter-district recruitment in government services.
The Bill, strongly opposed by the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other reserved categories was introduced in the legislative assembly earlier this year on February 28. However, following an across the board opposition, both within and outside the House, the Bill was referred to a Joint Select Committee, of both the Houses, under chairmanship of Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Abdul Rahim Rather.
Titled AS ‘J&K Civil Services Decentralisation and Recruitment Bill, 2009’, the piece of legislation sought to ban recruitment of youths belonging to one district against the posts in another district. While introducing the Bill, the Law Minister had said that the practice of reserving district level posts for the people of same district is being revived to ensure that right of the local youths is not taken away by the applicants of other districts. Similarly, for divisional level posts, the youth of that particular division would be eligible to apply.
This Bill hurts the interests of reserved communities most. The main aim of introducing this Bill was to block the recruitment of youth from Jammu region against posts reserved for their category in Kashmir region. It may be mentioned that Kashmir Valley does not have any Scheduled Caste population and the Scheduled Tribe population is either meager or educationally too backward to compete for the posts of even school teacher, patwari or police constable.
Enjoying the right of applying from anywhere in the state, the SC and ST youth from Jammu region have been applying for the reserve vacancies in different districts of Kashmir Valley and many of them got selected in the recent years. This trend is, however, strongly opposed in the Valley. Interestingly, the arch political rivals –National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party –are in complete consensus on this legislation.
The Joint Select Committee, with Law Minister Rather as its chairman, finally today Okayed the Bill the way government had wanted it though with a minor amendment. Leader of BJP legislature party Prof Chaman Lal Gupta and PDP legislator Choudhary Zulfikar Ali protested against the majority decision and did not sign the Bill. Sources said that while Zulfikar refused to sign the Bill saying that he can’t be party to a decision which hurts rights of poor and oppressed people, Prof Gupta did not attend the last meeting held in Srinagar today. Instead, the senior BJP leader sent a note of dissent, which, sources said, was not taken on record by the Joint Select Committee. Chaman Lal Gupta told Early Times, “the Bill is unconstitutional as per Section 14 and violative of fundamental rights and recruitment policy for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”.
This was third and last meeting of the JSC. The Bill will now be presented in the upcoming session of the state legislative assembly.
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