The state cabinet approved a roster system for the reservation of government jobs today, just ahead of the deadline set by the High Court.
In a hearing on April 20, the court had granted the government three weeks to introduce the roster system. The High Court had described it as alarming that Meghalaya, even 50 years after achieving statehood, had not put in place a roster system to manage its job reservation policy. The court’s decision put a temporary freeze on government recruitment, throwing the lives of job applicants into a tizzy.
The High Court will hold its next hearing tomorrow.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma described the formulation of the roster system as a “heavy exercise” that required a lot of homework on the part of officials and detailed discussions before finalisation.
Any restart of the recruitment process will depend on the court, he added.
Currently, 40 per cent of government vacancies are reserved for members of the Khasi-Jaiñtia community, 40 per cent for Garos and five per cent for other Scheduled Tribes.
This works neatly if there are large numbers of vacancies. However, it becomes trickier if there are only one or two.
To explain how the roster system would work, Sangma referred to the 4 per cent reservation for people with disabilities that his government introduced in 2020.
“We have implemented the roster system even for the physically challenged and disabled people. [Without a roster system] only if any recruitment had 25 posts would one post go to the physically challenged people. But, now with the roster system, suppose there are 10 posts, then there will not be any reservation for the physically challenged but, if later there are 15 posts open for recruitment, then the 15th post will go to the physically challenged.”
