In a major setback to the Haryana government, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday stayed a May 15 notification of the government giving accelerated promotions to the state’s Scheduled Caste (SC) employees of classes 3 and 4.
The notification was challenged by state government employees Dinesh Kumar and Jagbir Singh, terming it “illegal and arbitrary”. They submitted that with this notification, their chances of promotion had got “marginalised”.
As per the notification, SC employees were to be given 20% reservation in promotion.
Earlier, the then Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government had also given the quota in promotion with consequential seniority to SC employees from April 2013, which was struck down by a high court single bench. An appeal against the same is pending before the division bench.
The high court single-judge bench of justice Amit Rawal, while staying the government notification, has now issued a notice to the state for October 16. The petitioners had alleged that the notification had been carried out without undertaking the exercise in the correct perspective.
The government had to see inadequate representation of SC employees in a particular cadre and not in a bunch of cadres broadly grouped as classes C and D, said the petitioner’s counsel, Narinder Hooda. The government has issued a notification on the basis of the report of the committee, wherein the inadequate representation has not been examined cadre-wise. The backwardness of SCs as a community has been examined instead of backwardness of the class of employees in the cadre, Narinder Hooda added.
The government had to see inadequate representation of SC employees in a particular cadre and not in a bunch of cadres broadly grouped as classes C and D, said the petitioner’s counsel, Narinder Hooda. The government has issued a notification on the basis of the report of the committee, wherein the inadequate representation has not been examined cadre-wise. The backwardness of SCs as a community has been examined instead of backwardness of the class of employees in the cadre, Narinder Hooda added.