Govt to fill up vacant, reserved posts by March

The government is attempting to fill up the backlog promotion posts reserved for SC, ST, and OBC categories in central sector on a priority basis, by March 2012.

The government is attempting to fill up the backlog promotion posts reserved for SC, ST, and OBC categories in central sector on a priority basis, by March 2012.

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An estimated 50,000 posts are lying vacant in SC, ST, OBC categories from both fresh recruitments and promotions.

According to the ministry of social justice and empowerment, 40% of the posts are related to promotions reserved for these categories.

On Thursday, minister for social justice and empowerment Mukul Wasnik and department of personnel and training minister V Narayanasamy reviewed the situation of the backlog posts lying vacant across the central sector departments, related institutions and establishments.

The meeting comes after Wasnik wrote to DoPT, two months back, expressing concern over the posts allotted for SC, ST, OBCs not provided to them.

It is estimated that in railways itself there are more than 15,000 vacant reserved posts.

“It is not like there are no deserving candidates. We do not know the reasons for delay in filling the posts. We do not even know what the exact number of these posts in each department are,” said a ministry official.

“As direct recruitment will take time for clearances, processes and others, the opinion is that promotion posts should be filled without further delay, removing whatever bottlenecks crop up,” the official told HT.

While the move points to the government’s pursuit of social equity agenda, it also comes in wake of Dalit organisations criticising the government for not filling the posts lying vacant for years.

“There is an apathy evident in filling the reserved posts. The government should realise the work pressure on government servants and recruit all the backlog posts immediately,” Dr Udit Raj, president, All India Confederation of SC, ST Organisations said.

Though the government has in the past launched special recruitment drives to fill up the backlog reserved vacancies in central establishments, thousands of the posts are still lying vacant.

A total of 77,487 backlog vacancies were identified for a November 2008 drive of which 25,560 were for SCs, 28,542 for STs and 23,385 for OBCs.

Though stipulated that all backlogs would be filled up by June, 2011, it was found a large number of vacancies still remained unfilled.