The A’chik Organisation for Social Welfare (AOSW) has submitted its views on the reservation policy to the expert committee charged with studying a proposal to amend it.
The state reservation policy, which applies to government jobs and places in higher education, mandates that 40 per cent of posts/seats be reserved for the Garo community and 40 per cent for the Khasi-Jaintia community, an equal proportion despite the latter group being more populous.
The AOSW, like every other Garo-based organisation with an opinion, is of the view that the status quo should be maintained.
“Any slight change of the existing provisions of the policy would surely create a warlike situation and disturb the social fabric of a peaceful hill state,” the pressure group said in its submission.
The AOSW also had specific reasons not to change the policy. It said that the equality in reservation only exists on paper, not in real life – there are 19,000 Garo government employees, it claimed, slightly more than half the 35,000 Khasi-Jaintia civil servants. “Therefore, the policy needs to be followed in letter and spirit before planning to review it.”
Garo Hills also has lower quality educational institutes, evidenced by the stubbornly low pass percentage in the SSLC and HSSLC exams from the area. Garo Hills is also not only educationally backward but economically so too and removing reservation will only entrench this, the AOSW said.
