SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Feb. 24: The Jharkhand government is set to adopt a new recruitment policy in pursuance of the Jharkhand High Court order.
“We are, to some extent, dropping the amendments done in the recruitment rules done in 2021,” said a senior government official requesting anonymity.
Besides, according to sources, the government has added Hindi and English to the list of regional languages under the new policy.
Though the State cabinet is yet to clear the new policy, various departments have begun the process of framing rules in pursuance of the said new policy. It had taken almost six months to reframe the rules of various departments in view of the amendments in the rules done by the Hemant Soren government in 2021.
Incidentally, the cabinet meeting scheduled to be held on February 27 has been deferred. The Budget session of the state assembly is scheduled to begin on February 27.
The recruitment policy, quashed by the Jharkhand High Court, mandated the exam candidates to clear classes 10 and 12 from state schools as a prerequisite to apply for the tests. Besides, Hindi and English languages were excluded from the list of regional languages even as Urdu and Bengali were included in the category.
According to sources, Chief Minister Hemant Soren will wait to announce the new job policy till the bypoll in Ramgarh is over on February 27 as the new policy, which is apparently legally valid, may not be politically correct and it will have adverse impact on the voters of the ruling combine.
Notably, the Jharkhand High Court had scrapped the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) Examination Rules 2021, setting aside the recruitment policy for applicants on two grounds on December 16 last year.
First, the court ruled that amendment of the Rules is having no rational nexus with the object that the government wants to achieve i.e., to get a meritorious candidate for smooth functioning of the institutions and as such the consequence is class under class.
“The classification of depriving a candidate, who has got a certificate of Matriculation/10th or
Intermediate/10+2 Examination from the institutions situated outside the State of Jharkhand, is nothing but is a resident based classification, which is prohibited under the mandate of the Constitution. Thus institutional classification is bad in the eye of law,” a division bench comprising the then Chief Justice Ravi Ranjan and Justice S N Prasad had ruled.
“So far as deletion of Hindi/English from the syllabus of Paper-2 is concerned, no research has been conducted in this regard since as per Census of 2011 Hindi speaking people in the State of Jharkhand is much in number in comparison to most of other local languages prescribed in Syllabus of paper-2 i.e, Urdu, Santhali, Bangla, Mundari,Ho, Khariya, Kundukh,
Kurmali, Khortha, Nagpuri, Panchparganeya, Uriya, but no reason has been assigned that what led the formulator of the Rule to delete Hindi/English from the syllabus of Paper-2.
Therefore, the deletion of Hindi/English is nothing but depriving the majority of the candidates, who are Hindi/English speaking candidates, from a fair chance to participate in the process of selection. Further, keeping the other regional language i.e.,Urdu, Santhali, Bangla, Mundari,Ho, Khariya, Kundukh, Kurmali, Khortha, Nagpuri, Panchparganeya, Uriya in syllabus of Paper-2, is absolutely illegal and improper since the candidates opting such languages will be in an advantageous position to fetch higher marks in Paper-2 which will be
detrimental to the candidates who are having more proficiency either in English or Hindi and thereby the candidates having Hindi or English in paper-2 will be in disadvantageous position,” the court had observed.