Bill To Remove Backlog Of Sc, St Vacancies Passed

The Lok Sabha yesterday passed the Constitution Amendment Bill which would ensure that all the backlog in filling up of vacancies in jobs meant for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidates are cleared.

The Opposition Congress, which supported the Bill, later termed it "totally insufficient". It demanded that the situation existing before the five controversial official memoranda (OMs) were issued in 1997, should be restored.

"The distortions (created by the Oms) must be removed totally", Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi said. He added that his party president Sonia Gandhi had represented to Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee that the government should bring a comprehensive Constitutional amendment Bill so that anomalies created by all the five memoranda are removed. Since the government has bought only separate bills - one of them still to be considered - the Congress is insisting on its demand of a comprehensive bill.

 

Of the three Oms in respect of which the government has not taken any action, the first one relates to promotion in SC\ST.

According to this, an officer of general category, even if promoted after the promotion of an SC\ST category officer of his batch, would get back his seniority once he was promoted into the same rank as that of his SC\ST colleague.

The second OM relates to only lower category of jobs reserved for the SC\ST. The third OM changed the system of roster for postings and promotions of SC\STs to their detriment.