BENGALURU: The State Government has informed the Karnataka High Court that draft rules have been published to amend Rule 9 of the Karnataka Civil Services (General Recruitment) Rules, so as to provide 1 per cent reservation for transgenders in jobs.
A copy of the draft notification has been placed before a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj in response to public interest litigation filed by Sangama, an organisation working for the uplift of transgenders, and Nisha Gulur, who works for the welfare for transgenders. The petition sought reservation in jobs for the community under Section 2(k) of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.
According to draft rules, the government has proposed to amend Rule 9 to insert Sub-Rule (1)(D) to mandate that 1 per cent of vacancies in any service or post should be filled from the transgender community in each category of general merit, SC, ST and in each of the categories among Other Backward Classes.
The draft rules further state that every appointing authority should provide a separate column, or ‘others’, along with the gender in the application for recruitment to any category of Group A, B, C or D posts. The recruitment authority or the appointing authority should not discriminate a transgender person during selection. If sufficient number of eligible transgender persons are not available, to the extent of 1 per cent, the unfilled vacancies should be filled by male or female candidates, as the case may be, belonging to the same categories.
The government advocate submitted that the state has not received any objections to the draft rules, notified on May 15, and will issue a final notification to the amendment soon. Recording this, the court adjourned the hearing to July 20.
We have sent a proposal to the DPAR and we expect to implement the reservation at the earliest. Once it is done, it will be applicable for all cadres in the government sector. We will be the first state to implement it
Shashikala Jolle, Women and Child Development Minister