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Aligning ‘lateral entry’ with ‘social justice’ a tough exercise: Sitaram Kunte
Kunte’s statements came after Union Minister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances Jitendra Singh directed the UPSC to withdraw a recent advertisement for lateral entry recruitment
Sitaram Kunte, the former chief secretary of Maharashtra, stated that aligning lateral entry with the principles of social justice is the need of the hour. Kunte was delivering a talk on ‘Perspectives on Lateral Entry’ to the students at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics on Tuesday.
Kunte’s statements came after Union Minister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances Jitendra Singh directed the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to withdraw a recent advertisement for lateral entry recruitment.
While sharing the details of the scheme, Kunte said, the history of lateral entry goes back to the 1950s. In 2017, the NITI Aayog recommended the lateral entry scheme, and the first phase of lateral entry was completed with the induction of 8 Joint Secretaries in the year 2019. Subsequently, the second phase of recruitment happened in 2022 and the third one in 2023.
“Though there was some opposition for the earlier recruitments, it was weak. The controversy sparked off since there was no mention of reservation in the advertisement for this proposed recruitment of the 4th phase,” Kunte said.
Out of 63 individuals who have joined the service through the lateral entry process, about 50 are still working.
“If the reservation rules were applied to this proposed phase 4 recruitment of 45 candidates, then 23 would have been for the open category candidates and the remaining 22 would have been for the candidates belonging to the OBC, SC and the ST category. Even after applying the reservation rules, finding a suitable candidate from the category of reservation is not going to be an easy task”. Kunte pointed out.
He explained to the students how the reservation process is implemented by the government, Article 16 and the 200-point roster method of implementing reservation. The students participated in the question-and-answer session after the lecture.
