India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Narendra Modi government has come under strong condemnation from Congress and backward community leaders for recruiting 31 persons from the private sector into important positions in different departments in the Central government.
Congress has demanded immediate rollback of the decision.
The decision to appoint people from the private sector through what is described as “lateral entry” was announced on October 8.
The appointments came just two days after the Supreme Court had taken note of the reduced presence of SCs and STs in government jobs.
Congress said that “lateral entry’ is a bid to reduce the share of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in civil services.
Congress party’s Nitin Raut said that the lateral entry amounts to taking away the rights of the marginalized sections of the society.
“We unequivocally condemn the Narendra Modi-led BJP government’s systematic control tactics that enable discrimination and snatch away the opportunities from those who belong to the most marginalized communities. We are categorically against such lateral entry recruitment and strongly demand that the Modi government rolls back its decision,” Raut said in a media statement.
Raut heads Congress party’s SC department.
Raut described the lateral entry as a part of a larger “ill-willed scheme of BJP-RSS duo.”
He said that RSS-BJP wants to “capture all institutions, especially leadership positions,” and “annihilate diversity in all spaces to ensure the hegemonic dominance of their regressive idea of Hindutva.”
He said while the reservation policy did not apply to lateral entry recruitments, it limited SC/ST employees’ chances of getting promoted to top government positions.
The lateral entry also reduced the number of seats for general category candidates, which are annually filled up through all India exams by the Union Public Service Commission. In addition, it also reduces the number of reserved seats for SC/ST as also OBCs, which is directly proportional to the total number of vacancies being filled up.
Expressing concern over it, All India Muslim OBC Organization president Shabbir Ansari said it is a backdoor attempt to increase the number of upper castes in government departments.
(The story has been written by Abdul Bari Masoud.)
