SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Dec. 24: With barely one year in hand, Chief Minister Hemant Soren, if he survives the ED action or the governor’s decision on office of profit, cannot afford to challenge the Jharkhand High Court’s order on the recruitment policy in the Supreme Court.
“It will take at least six months to decide either way if the order is challenged in the Apex court. Till then, all the appointments will remain stalled. The model code of conduct will be imposed most likely by February 2024 for the Lok Sabha elections. Soon, thereafter the Assembly elections will be held in Jharkhand. So, the government will virtually not get any time to make fresh appointments,” pointed out an official.
The high court has rejected the policy under which an applicant should have passed classes 10 and 12 by the state board and Hindi and English languages were excluded from the list of regional languages even as Urdu and Bengali were included in the category.
So far the chief minister has not discussed the issue with officials about the future course of action but has refrained from uttering words on challenging it in the Supreme Court.
And not without reason.
The Hemant Soren government, soon after coming into power embarked on framing new recruitment and domicile policies in order to fulfil its election promises.
It tweaked the rules for appointing grade III and IV jobs and said that the students who passed their class X and XII examinations will not be eligible for taking exams in Jharkhand.
Accordingly, the appointment rules for various departments were changed by the concerned department and then approved by the cabinet. Thereafter, the requisition was sent to the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JSSC) and the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JPSC). So, the exercise took enormous time.
Now, if the government tweaks the job rules again in view of the Jharkhand high court all the rules will have to be amended again and get approved by the cabinet before being sent to the JSSC or the JPSC consuming much time.
No wonder, there was huge protest from youths after the Jharkhand High Court declared the job policy as unconstitutional. They fear that they have lost an opportunity to get a government job and by the time the government comes out with a new policy they will turn over-age and ineligible.
The chief minister somehow tried to quell their anger promising a new policy soon which will address their concerns.
“The government can bring the recruitment process on track only by allowing all the Indian citizens to apply for a job. If he makes any new experiment with job rules, defined by the court from time to time it will only boomerang, throwing the youths in desperation,” pointed out an official.
But then, Hemant Soren runs the risk of antagonising his voters if goes ahead with framing a legally sound policy. No policy could be both politically as well as legally correct policy, pointed out an official.
So, knowing fully well that he might antagonise his vote bank if he makes a legally correct policy, Hemant Soren today tried to console the constituency he had tried to please. “We tried to protect every class under the new job policy. The rights of the reserved class were already protected. We had tried to protect the rights of the youth of Jharkhand even on 40 percent seats of the general category. But the BJP played a role in cancelling the job policy,” he tweeted.
Notably, the JMM had thrown the BJP out of power on the promise of providing government jobs to 5 lakh youth in the next two years and also providing an unemployment allowance of Rs 5000 to Rs 7000 to the unemployed youth. It had also promised to give 10 percent extra marks to job aspirants of rural areas in competitive examinations and 75 percent jobs to locals in private sector companies.
But the report card says the JSSC could complete the appointment process of 378 jobs only during the last three years. The recruitment process for 11,000 jobs, which were underway, have been postponed after the high court order. The state government had also planned to recruit 50,000 school teachers. They have to be started afresh after the government approved a new job policy, said an official.
