Private job quota for locals ends with order
The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s recent order quashing a Haryana law that provided for 75 percent reservation in the private sector to the local youth brings the curtain down on several similar protectionist campaigns initiated by state governments. In 2019, Andhra Pradesh was among the first states to reserve 75 percent jobs for locals in private industrial units. The same year, wanting to burnish its ‘sons of the soil’ image, the Shiv Sena proposed an even higher reservation in private sector jobs for Maharashtrians; a resolution mandated that all industries seeking government concessions needed to reserve 80 percent of the non-supervisory jobs and half the supervisory ones for locals.
In India, where wide salary disparities between states drive the movement of migrant workers, can a state reserve private jobs for locals? The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act of 2020 was specific—it called for three-fourths reservation in private jobs that offered a monthly salary of up to ₹30,000. A bunch of industrial associations, private companies, societies, trusts and partnership firms opposed the law tooth and nail because it jeopardised their plans to bring in workers from neighbouring states for better skills or lesser costs. They argued that the law was against the basic principle of meritocracy that is a foundation for business growth and competitiveness. On its part, the Manohar Lal Khattar government claimed that the law merely made a “geographical classification” that was permitted under the Constitution, claiming it was to protect the right to employment of the people domiciled in the state.
While calling it unconstitutional, the high court said that private employers cannot be forced to employ persons from a particular state; it underlined that discriminating against individuals based on their state would be a negative treatment of other citizens of the country. The court was clear in its verdict that the law was beyond the state’s legal authority—ultra vires—and violated Part III of the Constitution. The ruling puts an end to all such protectionist measures by state governments and should help freer movement of migrants seeking livelihoods away from their own states. State governments should ideally treat migrant labourers as ‘guest workers’ like Kerala does, and provide them with equal rights and opportunities. That will surely boost the country’s GDP.