Niti Aayog shows how to eradicate reservation
Reservation to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) is built into the policy for government employment, but the NITI Aayog, the Centre's policy thinktank created by Prime Minister Modi superseding the Planning Commission, has demonstrated how to skirt the reservations.
Instead of filling up its posts that would have warranted reservation, the Aayog has been hiring ‘consultants’ claiming “procurement of consultancy services is not regular employment against the sanctioned posts and hence norms of reservation are not required."
The government employees' associations fear this is a new idea slipped in by the NITI Aayog that will be picked up by the government offices which are already engaging staff for the past decade on the fixed-time contract instead of appointing regular employees and paying them much less than the regular staff despite the Supreme Court ruling that a contract employees must get the same salary and allowances that are entitlement of a regular employee doing the same kind of job.
In a Right to Information (RTI) Act reply, it claimed to engage young professionals in terms of Rule 178. So far it has picked up 68 consultants in this manner, but the revelation showed that the Aayog flouted its own policy guidelines that "only technical and management professionals" should be hired as the consultants. Only 12 of the consultants engaged by it have any specialised background.
The RTI reply shows that at least 28 hired by it as consultants are simple graduates or post graduates among 46 young professionals and 22 senior consultants engaged till March 20, 2018. Only 11 qualify as technical or management professionals as required under the policy guidelines. Six of them are MBAs and five either BTech or MTech.
If the government departments pick up the cue from the policy think-tank, they may resort to hiring consultants instead of the regular employees as it will not only avoid the reservation requirements but also skip the employment through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) or Staff Selection Commission (SSC).
The NITI Aayog is also sitting over the caste census report received by the government in 2015. The caste census was ordered by the UPA government in 2011 to assess the latest percentage of castes in the Indian society as all data used by the government for various policies is 80 years-old. The government declared in 2015 to constitute an expert group to study the report, empowering the NITI Aayog deputy chairman to set up the group under his chairmanship. The group has not been set up till today.
Instead of filling up its posts that would have warranted reservation, the NITI Aayog has been hiring ‘consultants’ claiming “procurement of consultancy services is not regular employment against the sanctioned posts and hence norms of reservation are not required."