Nitish reignites demand for quota in private sector jobs
STIRRING THE POT With BJP opposing, Bihar CM puts onus on national debate
PATNA: Days after Bihar became the first state in India to enforce reservation i n government works outsourced to private sector, chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday argued in favour of reservation in private sector as well and has called for a national debate on the matter.
“I personally feel that reservations (for the backward classes) should cover the private sector, too. But the matter has to be decided by Parliament. Until then, it remains a subject for debate,” Kumar said while responding to a question on the legality of Bihar cabinet’s recent decision mandating enforcement of quota in jobs sourced through outsourcing agencies.
The Cabinet had decided that there would be 50% reservation in the outsourced jobs.
The decision has evoked striong reactions from the private sector, which believes that finding skilled technical staff from the reserved categories (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Class, Extremely Backward Class) could be difficult.
The government engages a large manpower from the outsourced companies, especially in the technical sector such as information technology.
The employment of outsourced technical staff has increased in recent years with more focus on It-based monitoring of schemes and direct benefit transfer into bank accounts of beneficiaries.
The policy had some of the leaders of the BJP, ally of Kumar’s JD(U), opposing.
Former Union health minister and BJP’S Rajya Sabha member CP Thakur and party’s legislative council have expressed disagreement with the policy announcement but Kumar said the new rule was in conformity with the Bihar Reservation Act, 2003, which empowers the state to extend reservation to people in the private sector employed by the government.
“Who is saying what becomes immaterial, when things are spoken without basic knowledge of facts,” he said while brushing aside the voices of dissent from his alliance partner, the BJP.
I personally feel that the reservations (for the backward classes) should cover the private sector, too. But the matter has to be decided by Parliament. Until then, it remains a subject for debate
NITISH KUMAR, Bihar chief minister
“The moment you utilise government resource, you are liable to follow the rules, be it in the case of data entry operators, technical support staff or otherwise,” the CM explained.
As for the fear over the lack of an adequate pool of human resource, Kumar said, “We have abundant manpower for every sector to find candidates from SC/ST, OBC, EBC, women and even those entitled for horizontal quota from the category reserved for the grandchildren of freedom fighters.”
Making light of what the chief minister termed was an “uninformed” debate, he said. “We have done it in the past, when we recruited former armymen on contract basis for special auxiliary police in 2006 to overcome shortage of personnel. We effected reservation across the board, instead of monitoring such appointments on departmental basis.”
The government cannot give concession to anyone for compromising the rights of those entitled for the quota benefit, he said. Moreover, the government has to come face to face with demands for absorption. “If processes are not followed at the initial stage, we will be handicapped in even considering such demands,” he said.
Quota has remained a sensitive issue in Bihar and had rocked the BJP boat in 2015 assembly elections, when RJD chief Lalu Prasad went whole hog to leverage RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s alleged call for review of reservation policy to the benefit of the Mahagathbandhan – Congress, JD(U) and the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD).
JD (U) walked out of the alliance to form the government in Bihar with help from the BJP.
Incidentally, Kumar had first raised the issue of quota in private sector jobs in 2016. Before him, former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan had vouched support, with Rashtriya Lok Samata Party chief Upendra Kushwaha being the latest to join the list.
RJD supremo Lalu Prasad on Monday targeted the CM, saying it was not a new idea. Prasad, however, said his party is not against the idea of reservation in the private sector.