New Delhi:
The government plans to introduce in the Rajya Sabha today, a bill to allow reservation in promotions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government jobs. The Union Cabinet cleared a proposal on Tuesday that seeks to amend four key articles of the Constitution to make that possible.
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. At an all-party meeting in August, most political formations supported quota in reservations. But 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.
(Poll: Do you support quotas for promotion in govt jobs?)The Prime Minister has said that a legally sustainable solution will be found. For now, the Congress-led UPA government has to ensure that Parliament sits long enough for the bill to be taken up. With only three days left of the current monsoon session, it has requested the main opposition party, the BJP, to help pass the Bill; the BJP has not allowed either House 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. But the party supports the reservation-in-promotions bill and it remains to be seen if that will make it agree to let Parliament function so that it can be passed. Top BJP leaders met on Tuesday evening to discuss the matter and the party has decided to continue its protest in Parliament over the coal scam.
(Read: BJP to continue protest, unlikely to oblige on promotion quota bill)
The bill will need the support of a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament as it seeks to amend the Constitution. It entails a vote and the House has to be in order. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has said the government is determined to pass it. If it does manage to get Parliament to function and pass the bill in the Rajya Sabha today, it plans to bring it in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
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 it this once. The SP was the lone dissenter at the all-party meeting in August. 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 yesterday.
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. Ms Mayawati said on Tuesday, "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.
Though the amendments are aimed at legally combating any challenge, the bill 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.