The office of the Chief Minister is flooded with petitions from employees of the State Secretariat requesting discontinuance of reservation in promotions at all levels of Government services as per the Supreme Court order.
Seeking Government intervention, unreserved category employees have urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to pass necessary orders to discontinue the policy of providing reservation in promotions to reserve category employees and review all such promotions given since October 19, 2006 in violation of the apex court order.
“Such violation of the apex court’s ruling is a direct infringement on my right to equality and equal opportunity,” said Manoranjan Das, convener of the Odisha Secretariat Unreserved Employees Coordination Committee.
Das, a section officer in the Finance Department, said while deliberating on the issue of validity of the 77th Constitutional amendment of 1995 and 85th Constitutional amendment of 2001, the Supreme Court said the concerned state will have to show in each case the existence of the compelling reasons namely, backwardness, inadequacy of representation and overall administrative efficiency before making provision for reservation in promotion.
“Though the State Government is yet to initiate any such exercise to ascertain quantifiable data on the three points as pointed out by the apex court, it still continues with the policy of providing reservation in promotion to the reserved category employees even after the same was declared unconstitutional in 2006,” the petitioner said.
What is most appalling is that while other states and the Central Government have discontinued the provision, Odisha is the only State where government employees of scheduled categories enjoy the benefit, Das said in his petition.