New Delhi:
The government plans to introduce in the Rajya Sabha tomorrow, a bill that seeks to amend the Constitution to allow reservation in promotions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in public services. The Union Cabinet cleared that proposal today; the amendments will enable state governments to provide such reservation in jobs.
The Congress-led UPA government has reportedly requested the main opposition party, the BJP, to consider passage of the bill. The BJP has not allowed Parliament to function for the last 10 days demanding the Prime Minister's resignation in connection with a coal scandal and has made it clear that it will not relent till its demands are met. The party, however, supports this bill, and it remains to be seen if that will make it agree to let Parliament function so that it can be passed. The current monsoon session of Parliament ends on Friday.
(Poll: Do you support quotas for promotion in govt jobs?)This bill will need a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament to become law as it seeks to amend the Constitution. It entails a vote and the House has to be in order. Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, which provides outside support to the UPA government and has bailed it out of sticky positions many times, has said it will oppose this move. The SP, was the lone dissenter at an all-party meeting on the issue in August; all other political formations supported quota in reservations. The BJP had cautioned the government at the meeting that all implications should be considered before a final decision.
The SP wants all quota benefits to be extended to other backward classes (OBCs). "This stand of the cabinet is wrong. The Samajwadi Party is against this and we will continue to protest," senior SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav said today.
Amending the Constitution became necessary after the Supreme Court struck down in April this year, a decision made by Mayawati when she was Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, to provide reservation for SC/STs in promotion to higher posts in government departments.
Mayawati, who heads the Bahujan Samaj Party, is now making focused efforts to get political parties to cooperate and allow a discussion and vote on the bill. She has met BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley to seek their support. The BJP leaders told her that a decision on this will be taken only after a party meeting. Ms Mayawati said today, "We want to request for a voting on the bill in this session and request NDA to help us in this. We want UPA also to appeal to NDA to help us pass this bill."
When it quashed the Mayawati decision, the Supreme Court had questioned this criterion for promotion, saying the government needed to quantify that Dalits and backwards were insufficiently represented in the public services and therefore needed this quota. The court had said that three aspects needed to be looked into for reservations in promotions: backwardness, representation and overall administrative efficiency.
Attorney General GE Vahanvati has warned the government that any law on the reservations issue should be framed with extreme caution because it is likely to be legally challenged.
The Prime Minister has said that a legally sustainable solution will be found. To legally combat any challenge, the proposed bill seeks to amend four key articles of the Constitution. However, it might still run into rough weather in the courts. Constitutional expert PP Rao said that if the government brings in amendment without "curing the defects" pointed out by the Supreme Court then it may not stand legal scrutiny.