‘Lateral Entry’ political storm reveals delayed quota angst
Image credit X.com @narendramodi
Lateral entry kicks off quota storm
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, August 19: The advertisement of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for 45 higher level positions in the Central government has kicked off a political firestorm. The Opposition has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of ducking the quota regime.
The government has shot back at the Opposition, accusing the Congress of ‘hypocrisy’. Modi after assuming power in New Delhi had showcased ‘Lateral Entry’ as his grand idea for reform of bureaucracy.
The leitmotif for the ‘Lateral Entry’ has been stated as urgency to address the ‘talent deficit’ in the bureaucracy. Some of the lateral entrants are currently serving in key positions in the Central ministries.
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An application filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI) by this author had revealed that as many as 49 young professionals were serving the Niti Aayog in 2018. It’s widely believed that the think-tank of the government largely consists of the professionals engaged under contract in which reservation provisions are not applied.
The Niti Aayog vice-chairman in 2018 Rajiv Kumar had replied on the reservation norms being given ignored, saying: “Young professionals are engaged by NITI Aayog in terms of rule 178 under procurement of consultancy services”. “It’s not regular employment against the sanctioned posts, hence, norms of reservation are not required,” Kumar was quoted in the report filed by this author for The New Indian Express.
The Congress president, Mallikarjuna Kharge, has alleged that the “Modi government as part of a well-thought conspiracy is keeping out the candidates from the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the other backward castes from the scope of the lateral entry”.
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Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw rebutted Kharge. “The second Admin Reforms Commission (ARC) was established in 2005 under UPA government. Veerappa Moily chaired it. The UPA period ARC recommended recruitment of experts to fill the gaps in roles that require specialised knowledge,” Vaishnaw stated in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
While the contractual employments in several ministries had been buzzing for past 10 years, the Opposition appears to have lately become aware of the potential to dilute the reservation in top bureaucracy. This is despite the fact that members of parliament of even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been speaking off-the-record against the “contractual employments in bureaucracy coming at the expense of the candidates from the reserved categories”.
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The awakening of the Congress to the quota politics evidently brought the lateral entry to the attention of the Opposition parties. The Niti Aayog is arguably the abode of the lateral entrants.
The think tank in its outcomes has hardly instilled confidence in the Opposition parties in the acquired talent pool. In few of the pressers, journalists told the heads of the Niti Aayog that portions of its plan papers had “cut and paste and even direct lift from Google”.
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