Junk prejudicial bill on pvt sector quota

There seems to be a serious lack of coordination between the top leadership of Congress party and Karnataka state leaders. On one hand, the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi is highly critical of the BJP-led NDA government, saying that it has failed to fulfill its promise of creating lakhs of jobs and that every section of the society is hurt by unemployment, and vows to wage a fight against this from streets to Parliament to secure justice for the unemployed.

On the other hand, the Karnataka government comes up with a bill and wanted to mix populism with the state’s economic growth. It is not the first government to come up with such discriminatory bill. In 2019, the YSRCP government in AP, and in 2021 the Jharkhand government, Haryana and Punjab governments also came up with such bills but they were struck down by High Courts.

Before trying to ape them, did the Karnataka government consult the high command? Does Rahul Gandhi approve such a bill which is discriminatory? Is that the way he and the INDIA bloc want to uphold the Constitution? How is it that the Karnataka government failed to study constitutional and practical problems that could arise if the bill were to be tabled in the legislature? Karnataka so far is considered to be a progressive state whose ease of business rating is high. It has been the number one state in IT sector and a role model for other states. It is shocking that it has come up with such an ill-conceived bill.

Apart from the legal and constitutional issues, the main question is do we have 75% skilled labour in any state to fill the vacancies? The second issue is who should certify whether one has necessary skills for a particular job in sector? A government official? The first question is what are his qualifications and ability to decide whether a person is fit for a particular technical job or not? This will lead to more of corruption. How can a government officer sit on the recruitment committees of the private sector? How can the government say that people have to take a language test?

Preference should be given to domicile candidates but it should not be absolute and should not exclude non-domicile candidates altogether. This is what Supreme Court had also said in Dr Pradeep Jain v. Union of India (1984).

Reservations in private sector would lead to undue interference in the operations and recruitment choices of private sector. We have seen how some excellent PSUs like Scooters India in early 1990s was killed when jobs were filled with local people without required technical qualifications due to pressure from trade unions.

If such a law is made, no industry would show interest in going to that state and the existing ones would move away. We have seen how non responsive non friendly attitude has turned away major industries from Andhra Pradesh and how its brand image suffered a severe beating. No industry would like undue interference in its operations and recruitment choices.

The short-sighted bill needs to be junked. It is regressive, says the industry and they are certainly right in this regard. Domicile-based reservations lie in balancing the right to equality with the need for affirmative action. Article 14 of the Constitution guarantees equality before the law, while Articles 15 and 16 prohibit discrimination based on place of birth. Policies must be carefully crafted to meet the criteria of reasonableness and proportionality.