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Supreme Court accepts plea against HC ruling on Haryana private jobs quota
The bench issued notice to the Faridabad Industries Association and Union of India on the appeal filed by the Haryana government.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine the correctness of a judgment by the Punjab and Haryana high court that quashed a 2021 Haryana law providing for 75% reservation for local candidates in private sector jobs, paying up to ₹30,000 a month.
A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Aravind Kumar issued notice to the Faridabad Industries Association and the Union of India on the appeal filed by the Manohar Lal Khattar government against the high court verdict.
Representing the state government, solicitor general (S-G) Tushar Mehta contended that the high court judgment was not “well-reasoned” and that the apex court ought to examine the contours of the legislative powers in an elected government. Mehta also urged the bench to take up the case on an early date and decide it expeditiously.
Responding, the bench said that it would wait for replies from the parties in the matter and would subsequently take up the matter. The petitioners had made the central government a party to their plea against the law in the high court.
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The court assured the S-G that it would list the matter for final disposal soon. According to the Supreme Court website, the next date of hearing in the matter is March 22.
The Haryana government passed a law in 2021 providing reservation in industries to residents with domicile of the state, defined as “local candidates”. Under the law, every employer was required to employ 75% “local candidates” for posts where the gross monthly salary was not more than ₹30,000. The Act, which covered private companies, societies, trusts and partnership firms, came into force on January 15, 2022. Industry bodies, including the Faridabad Industries Association, appealed against the law. The Punjab and Haryana high court declared the law unconstitutional and violative of Part 3 (fundamental rights) of the Constitution, and stayed it in 2022. The court finally nixed the law on November 17, 2023, delivering a setback to the Khattar government less than a year before Assembly polls.
In its appeal, the state government has claimed that it was well within the legislative authority of an elected government to provide for quota for the local candidates and that the 2021 law envisaged a social welfare policy aimed at uplifting the natives of the state.
While ruling on the law, the high court had observed that the concept of constitutional morality had been openly violated by introducing a secondary status to a set of citizens not belonging to the state of Haryana and curtailing their fundamental rights to earn their livelihood.
“The state cannot direct the private employers to do what has been forbidden to do under the Constitution of India. It cannot as such discriminate against the individuals on account of the fact that they do not belong to a certain state and have negative discrimination against other citizens of the country,” the verdict by a division bench of justices GS Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan held.
Highlighting that the Constitution barred discrimination against citizens’ employment on the basis of places of birth and residence, the judgment also cautioned that the Haryana law could lead to similar pieces of legislation in other parts of the country, noting it was beyond the purview of the state to legislate on the issue and restrict a private employer from recruiting from the open market.
“The court cannot see any reason how the State can force a private employer to employ a local candidate as it would lead to large scale similar state enactments providing similar protection for their residents and putting up artificial walls throughout the country, which the framers of the Constitution had never envisaged”, it underlined in the judgment.
