Activists of the Muslim Youth League (MYL) will stage a 24-hour strike in front of the Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram on January 29 and 30 in protest against the reservation policy and the alleged recruitment freeze in the State.
At a news conference here on Thursday, MYL State general secretary P.K. Firos said that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government was going ahead with a reservation policy that took away the justice provided to Dalits and Other Backward Classes. Now, the government has framed fresh rules in the Kerala Administrative Service that failed to give prominence to those communities that got benefits under the existing reservation policy adopted by successive governments all these years, he said.
The move was to reduce the reservation quota to one-third of the total vacancies. Already, the government has implemented a proposal to provide economic reservation to forward castes. It was deplorable that the State government refused to accept the decision of the Centre to raise the creamy layer to ₹8 lakh from ₹6 lakh.
He also alleged that an anti-reservation lobby, which functioned in the CPI(M), called the shots in the government and that it had resulted in government taking a vengeful attitude against the Kerala University Vice Chancellor for implementing the reservation quota in the appointment of teachers.
Flays government
Mr. Firos also flayed the government for freezing recruitments in the State. About 1,200 appointments had been made in the last grade section in Kozhikode district when the previous United Democratic Front was in power. But now the recruitment has been cut to 600 in this section. Likewise, recruitments had been stopped in the Forest Department, Beverages Corporation and lower division clerk grades. Ironically, the LDF had in its election manifesto stated that the coalition would offer jobs to 25 lakh people, Mr. Firos said.
