‘The SCs and STs (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008’
Posted by humanhorizons on February 17, 2009
Violation of fundamental rights enshrined in Constitution of India by proposing features like section 4 under ‘The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008’
With reference this bill following points must need urgent attention and action.
1. Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment (Article 16) and birth (Article 15) are vital section of the Fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. These Articles of Constitution cannot be amended by a simple majority in both the Houses of parliament. Also parliament can’t make law prohibiting these essential rights.
2. The proposed features like section 4 under ‘The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008’ are unwarranted and violate the fundamental rights enshrined under Article 16 (Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment). According to Art 16 (1)-There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State.
(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect of, any employment or office under the State.
3. According the Constitution of India, in the name of national importance can’t make any rules to discriminate SC/ST population. Nowhere in the world is government makes a law to discriminate their oppressed population projecting something important and hence should have exclusion policy (against SC/ST in India). Rather the most prestigious institutes should be first to implement the affirmative action policies.
4. Most of the institutions amongst 47 mentioned under section 4 schedule of the proposed bill, have SC/ST reservation policy of Indian constitution. Central government can’t put forth a bill which violets the basic fundamental rights of Constitution. If central government wants to enact a law to discriminate SC/ST faculties in public institutions, government need to amend the Art.15, Art 16 and all other basic structure of Constitution. Such amendment is not possible under the constitutional law of the Indian nation. Article 13 (2) provides for the protection of the fundamental rights of the citizen and change the basic structure of the constitution. Parliament and the state legislatures are clearly prohibited from making laws that may take away or abridge the fundamental rights guaranteed to the citizen.
5. As we all are aware that SC/ST representation in teaching posts in the Central Universities, IITs, IIMs, NITs and other Institutes of higher education is negligible even after 62 years of independence of India.
6. First time in the year 2005, the Govt. of India, MHRD vide their order No. 6-30/2005 U-5 dated 6th December, 2005 has directed the UGC to implement the SC/ST reservation on teaching posts in Central Universities and Institutes which are deemed to be Universities receiving grants from Govt. of India. Consequently, the UGC directed all the Central Universities and other Institutes to implement the SC/ST reservation on all the teaching posts such as Lecturer, Reader and Professor and by whatever other nomenclature the posts are known. The same type of order was sent by MHRD to IITs in June, 2008. These orders were validated by the Hon`ble Supreme Court in case of SC/ST. Moreover, in these orders only posts were made reserved and no relaxation was given to SC/ST candidates in eligibility criteria to maintain the standard of higher education.
7. Working Group Report of the “DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION OF SC/ST/MINORITIES/GIRLS AND OTHER DISADVANTAGED GROUPS” for 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) states that the teaching and other posts in the universities and other institutions should be filled as per the reservation policy without any dilution. UGC should make strict rules and regulations to fill in the post of reserved category. Defaulting universities or affiliated colleges should not be granted financial support or any grants.
8. The policy guidelines mentioned in Para 2 above are in infant stage and being formulated for implementation by the Central Universities and IITs. In the same time the Govt. of India is going to pass ‘The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008’ in the Parliament, whose only objective is to end the representation of the SC/ST community from the premier and resourceful institutes of higher education.
9. The most disappointing parts of the above said bill are clause (iii) and clause (iv) of subsection (1) of section 4, according to which there is no reservation to posts higher than the lowest grade of group ‘A’ posts and classified as scientific and technical post; and to posts higher than the lowest grade of group ‘A’ posts in institutions of national importance and Indian Institutes of Management specified in the Schedule. It means that there will be no SC/ST teacher in IITs and very few SC/ST teachers in Central Universities (total 47 educational institutes at present and more can be added). Therefore, section (4) of the bill is against to the existing reservation policy mentioned in Para 2 and that will result in bad to worse condition of SC/ST community in higher education.
10. The Banaras Hindu University itself has around 2300 teaching posts. As an average all the 47 institutes mentioned in the Schedule have twenty three thousand and five hundred (47×500 = 23500) teaching posts and as per the recommendations of Sixth Pay commission, all of them are higher than the lowest grade of group ‘A’. Thus around 5287 posts out of which many can be filled by the SC/ST candidates are being exempted from the preview of reservation. Most of the Universities have affiliated colleges also (more than 100 colleges are affiliated with DU) and therefore, this number may go up to 10 thousand.
11. It is worth to mention that there is no representation of the members of SC/ST community in the Executive Boards and Selection Committees constituted for the recruitment of teachers in higher educational institutes. History is evident that the merit of candidates belonging to SC/ST category is ignored by the selection committee when they apply under general category. Further, due to negligible representation of SC/ST candidates on teaching posts in the universities, the SC/ST students face lot of difficulties in completing their projects and Ph.D. etc; and welfare schemes for SC/ST students also do not run successfully.
12. In the present bill, nothing has been mentioned about the ban on de-reservation, steps to stop the discrimination with SC/ST candidates in selection committees and panel action against the defaulter officers. Moreover, in this Bill all the existing provisions for SC/ST reservation on teaching posts in Central Universities and other Higher Educational Institutes mentioned in Para 2 above have been weaken and an instrument (subsection 2 of section 4) has been provided to prevent the SC/ST candidates from entering into the higher education. One day, Govt. of India will declare the Parliament as an Institute of National Importance and therefore no representation for SC/ST in the seats of MPs/MLAs.
