Constitution bill to annul SC ruling on quotas

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 29. The Government has decided to bring in a bill to amend the Constitution to nullify a Supreme Court judgment on limiting the percentage of backlog vacancies and discontinuation of special recruitment drives in government jobs for Scheduled Caste/Tribe candidates.

The SC had put these restrictions on recruitment of SC/ST candidates while delivering the judgment on implementation of the Mandal Commission report in 1993 but put a five year embargo on implementation of the guidelines.

There has been a spate of protests from SC/ST organisations and political parties and representations galore for nullification of the judgment through an amendment to Article 16 of the Constitution.

Only last week the Congress(I) president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, had written to the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, reminding him of his promise to redress the grievances of SC/STs arising out of the SC verdict.

As a follow-up to the judgment, the Department of Personnel and Training, during the Narasimha Rao government, through an office memorandum dated August 29, 1997, had applied a 50 per cent limit to current as well as backlog vacancies and discontinuation of the special recruitment drives for SC/ST candidates.

The proposal approved by the Cabinet today for amending Article 16 of the Constitution would enable the state to consider backlog vacancies as a separate class to be filled in any succeeding year or years and such class of vacancies shall not be considered together with the current vacancies of the year in which they are being filled for determining the ceiling of 50 per cent reservation on total number of vacancies that year.

Sooner than later the Government will have to take a view on another demand by SC/ST organisations and political parties for continuation of reservation in promotions.

The apex court in the Mandal judgment had disapproved the concept of reservation in promotions.

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