Alleging that the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government in the State was disinterested in the implementation of Article 371(J) of the Constitution that provided special status to Hyderabad Karnataka region, the former Minister Vaijanath Patil, who recently quit the Congress citing this reason, gave a clarion call to people to defeat the coalition candidates in the region in the Lok Sabha elections.
Showing a copy at a media conference here on Saturday of a job notification issued by the coalition government for the recruitment of 570 Assistant Engineer posts and 300 Junior Engineer posts in the Department of Public Works, the veteran activist leader, who had been in the forefront of a prolonged civil society struggle for Article 371(J), said that the alliance government had deliberately violated Article 371(J) by making no provision for providing reservation for Hyderabad Karnataka candidates.
“We fought for 15 years to get Article 371(J) but the successive governments in the State are not ready to wholeheartedly implement it. In the previous Siddaramaiah government, 622 data entry operator posts were called without making any provision for reservation for Hyderabad Karnataka candidates. The notification was so cunningly designed that it was shown as one data operator for one gram panchayat. The government had initially justified it stating that reservation could not be applied when there was only one post. With our intervention, the process got stayed. Even in the subsequent recruitment of District Judges, the same thing was repeated. Now, the coalition government is continuing the injustice to the region in the recruitment of engineers,” he said. Mr. Patil added that decentralised agitations would be organised across the six districts of the region next Thursday demanding that the notification in question be withdrawn and a fresh one issued making provision for reservation to Hyderabad Karnataka candidates. “We will also demand stringent action against the officers responsible for the violation,” he said.
Responding to a question, the veteran leader said that his call for defeating coalition candidates should not be misunderstood and reduced to defeating Congress leader M. Mallikarjun Kharge alone. “I don’t see ‘individual candidates’. I am more for Article 371(J) than for politics. The coalition government in the State is meting out injustice to the region despite Article 371(J) being in force and I am calling upon people to defeat the coalition candidates in the region without seeing ‘individual candidates’ in a particular constituency,” he said.
When asked, he said that he and his organisation — Hyderabad Karnataka Horata Samithi — would support a candidate who had better prospects of defeating the coalition candidate in a particular constituency.
To a question, Mr. Patil, while stating that the special status to the region under Article 371(J) was a result of consistent and collective efforts of all, disapproved of Mr. Kharge being projected as the only man behind the historic enactment. “It was a result of collective efforts by all. Everybody, including Mr. Kharge and his party, supported it,” he said.