Jammu, April 8 (Inditop.com) A bill seeking to ban inter-district recruitment in Jammu and Kashmir, denying the Scheduled Caste candidates jobs reserved for them at district level, has generated anger in the Jammu region where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for a shutdown Friday.
The shutdown is likely to coincide with a scheduled debate over the bill in the state legislature Friday.
Both the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley and Hindu-dominated Jammu region have their own reasons for supporting and opposing the bill that bars applicants from seeking jobs in districts other than their native ones.
While the valley feels that inter-district recruitment limits Kashmiri youths’ employment opportunities as jobs are reserved for the Scheduled Caste community the Jammu region feels that the bill seeking to ban such recruitment overturns the constitutional provision of reservation of jobs for the socially marginalised people.
In the valley, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party has decided to oppose inter-district recruitment. It wants a blanket ban on such recruitment.
In the Jammu region, the BJP is backing inter-district recruitment. It has given a call for Jammu shutdown Friday, to demonstrate its opposition to the ban sought on it.
National Conference’s (NC) Kashmir leadership is supporting the bill to ban inter-district recruitment, and Jammu’s Congress leadership is opposed to it. The NC and the Congress are coalition partners in the state.
The Jammu region is opposed to the bill because it would deprive the Scheduled Caste community, which constitutes about 20 per cent of the five million population in the region, of the district cadre posts in the Kashmir Valley. The state has a population of over ten million.
The community has no presence in the valley where Muslims are in an overwhelming majority, with less than 3,500 Kashmiri Hindus as a microscopic minority.
The Kashmir Valley’s political leadership favours the ban on inter-district recruitment for it wants the local youth to avail the jobs. Both the major political parties of the valley, the ruling National Conference and opposition PDP are on the same page on this issue.
“Our youth lose out as outsiders get the jobs, only because the candidates from other districts can apply for the jobs in our district,” Saifullah Mir, National Conference legislator representing Kupwara constituency in northwest Kashmir told IANS.
“We want that only local candidates should get the district cadre jobs,” he said.
Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar had endorsed this viewpoint on March 22, when he stated that the “bill banning inter-district recruitment would be tabled in the house on March 24”.
The bill could not be tabled in the house on the scheduled date, because of the opposition within the coalition government — that too from a section of the Congress.
Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, who is from the Congress, had told party seniors in Delhi that the bill would harm the interests of the Scheduled Caste community.
The Congress is committed to the betterment of the Scheduled Castes and other backward communities. “We will stand by our commitment,” he told his cabinet colleagues Tuesday, according to sources close to him.
BJP’s state unit president Shamsher Singh Manhas said: “It is Kashmiri domination that is trying to dictate the state policy, leaving Jammu high and dry.”
“We will make every effort, both inside and outside the legislature, to stall the passage of this bill,” he said.
The bill is scheduled to come up for debate in both houses of the state legislature Friday. The contents of the bill have been amended to give reservation to the Scheduled Caste in posts at the provincial and state level.
The Peoples Democratic Party is against the amendment. “We will oppose the bill in the amended form. We are opposed to the reservation of jobs at the divisional and state level posts,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti told reporters in Srinagar Wednesday.
