Government employees belonging to non-Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories on Sunday urged the government to withdraw the Ordinance that seeks to legalise promotions granted to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes employees since 1978 circumventing the February 9 Supreme Court judgment.
Coming together under the banner of AHIMSA (Alpasankhyata, Hindulida and Samanya — minorities, backward classes and general category), representatives of 63 government departments from Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts discussed the implications of the Ordinance.
AHIMSA president N. Nagaraj said that the employees would soon take out a protest rally in Mangaluru followed by another one in Bengaluru urging the government to immediately implement the Supreme Court judgment.
Participants in the meeting said that they were not opposed to reservation in jobs for any category; what they were opposed to was reservation in promotions too, which had been struck down by the Supreme Court. The court had said that reservation in promotions was given without any study indicating inadequate representation of reserved categories in top posts.
As a result of reservation in promotions, more than 40% of top posts in all government departments were being held by people belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories.
In the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation, all 34 posts of Chief Engineers are held by the two categories, participants lamented.
While the Supreme Court had rightly set aside the promotion rules, the government taking the Ordinance route is distressing, the participants said.
AHIMSA office-bearers Ravi, B.T. Kantharaju, Manjappa, Yashwanth and others were present.