Amidst an ongoing tussle over de-reserving Central government quota posts, particularly in promotion vacancies, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has now decided to “comprehensively review” all proposals to de-reserve government posts that have come from the Centre in the last three years.
Political Context
The move by the Commission to investigate de-reservation proposals from the Union government comes soon after nudging from the National Commission led to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to revise its existing procedure on de-reservation to double the time that Commissions for SCs and STs get to object to such proposals from two weeks to one month. However, for such a de-reservation exercise, a proposal for it has to be examined first by the National Commissions for SCs, STs, or OBCs (whichever is applicable) and then by a Committee of Secretaries of the concerned Departments, the DoPT and the Social Justice Ministry. Following this, the final decision is left to the Minister of Personnel and Training. In case of de-reserving posts for promotion vacancies, where currently reservations for SC and ST categories are applicable, the procedure allows for the concerned recruiting Department or Ministry to have the final say even though they are required to submit a proposal to the National Commissions and DoPT and wait for their comments on it. there is no mandate to do this thus far While the Union government’s current policy on de-reservation notes that the DoPT keeps advising recruiting Ministries and departments to explore alternate options to fill reserved vacancies before de-reserving them.
The NCSC and the Centre have been clashing over the issue of de-reserving government posts for the last two years with the commission saying that de-reservation proposals are often incomplete and do not reveal alternate efforts made to fill the reserved posts, a “recurring issue” it has decided to examine and make recommendations to ensure proper implementation of the reservation policy. There is a general ban on the practice of de-reserving posts with very specific exceptions that allow for this, according to regulations for government recruitment issued by the DoPT. The rules allow de-reserving a direct recruitment vacancy only in cases where a “vacancy in a Group ‘A’ service cannot be allowed to remain vacant in public interest”. In the latest Full Commission meeting this year on June 4, the NCSC noted that it had decided to undertake a full review of all de-reservation proposals from the Centre with the objective of examining “recurring issues” and formulating “appropriate recommendations for ensuring effective implementation of the reservation policy”.
