The State cabinet today decided to amend the office memorandum issued in May 2022 for the reservation roster regarding recruitment in the State government departments and agencies.
According to Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, the amended office memorandum is likely to be notified tomorrow or day after which the recruitment process in State government departments and agencies will resume.
“It has been amended to include certain aspects. The necessary details of the office memorandum will be released in a few days,” Sangma said.
He also said that the recommendations given by the all-parties committee have been included in the amended office memorandum.
However, Sangma declined to clarify if the reservation roster will be retrospective or prospective. “Roster is a continuous process,” he said.
Explaining that the halt on recruitment is not healthy, Sangma stated that by putting on hold recruitment, many job seekers will get over-aged and will suffer.
He also said that resumption of job recruitment after the new roster OM would ensure that the youth get the jobs while the process of reviewing the reservation policy is going on.
It may be mentioned that the State government had issued an office memorandum dated May 10, 2022 for retrospective application of the roster system in the State.
The decision to apply the compensatory roster system from the date the State reservation policy was enacted in 1972 has had a significant bearing on job seekers from the Khasi community as most of the jobs were given to the candidates from the Garo community.
However, the Meghalaya High Court on April 3, 2023 cleared the doubts over the retrospective narrative of the roster system. The court said the cut-off date for the applicability of the roster system is a policy matter that is best left to the legislature and the executive of the State.
In view of the hue and cry over the prospective implementation of the roster system, the State government has decided to put on hold all new advertisements about vacant posts as also all recruitments till the matter is sorted out and all concerns are addressed.
