The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) cancelled its advertisement for lateral entry recruitment to bureaucracy on Tuesday afternoon in accordance with a mandate from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Minister of State (MoS) in the PMO Jitendra Singh wrote a letter to UPSC Chairperson Preeti Sudan stating that the proposed hiring of specialists should be “reviewed and reformed” because it does not allow for reservations and is at odds with PM Narendra Modi’s emphasis on guaranteeing social justice.
“The Prime Minister believes that reservations in public employment are essential to our social justice framework, which seeks to rectify past injustices and foster inclusivity,” he stated. According to sources, the government would examine the lateral-entry hiring campaign and determine whether the reservation laws might be used to hire specialists. This evaluation would take place following stakeholder consultation.
Following criticism of the recruitment push by the opposition INDIA alliance and important allies of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, including the Janata Dal (United) and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), the PMO became involved in the case.
Recruiting 45 joint secretaries, directors, and deputy secretaries through lateral entry—also known as the hiring of professionals (including those from the private sector) in government departments—was announced by the UPSC on Saturday, August 17.
The UPSC announced in a notification on Tuesday night that the “requisitioning authority has requested that the advertisement pertaining to lateral recruitment for 45 posts” in various departments be deleted.
Union Minister Chirag Paswan praised the move and expressed gratitude to the PM from Patna. He claimed that the NDA government’s “commitment towards SCs, STs, and OBCs” has been reaffirmed by the Center’s decision.
The Congress said that the Centre’s cancellation of the recruitment was because of the campaign led by party leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, and other INDIA bloc parties. The Congress had accused the government of trying to “snatch” reservations of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) through lateral entry.
“Whether it is the long-term capital gain/indexation attack on the middle class in the Budget, or referring the Waqf Bill to JPC (joint parliamentary committee), or putting the Broadcast Bill on the back burner, the power of the people and the Opposition is saving the country from the Modi government,” Kharge stated.
“Since these positions have been treated as specialised and designated as single-cadre posts, there has been no provision for reservation in these appointments,” MoS Singh wrote in a letter to the UPSC chairperson. “This aspect needs to be reviewed and reformed in the context of the PM’s focus on ensuring social justice,” the minister stated.
Therefore, he urged the UPSC to revoke the August 17 lateral entry recruitment advertising. Singh went on to say that ending the procedure would be a big step forward in the fight for social justice and empowerment.
The minister did, however, note that the lateral entrance principle had been approved by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), which was established in 2005 and is led by M Veerappa Moily. According to him, the 2013 suggestion made by the Sixth Pay Commission went in the same direction. Singh stated, “However, there have been numerous high-profile cases of lateral entrants both before and after that.”
Singh made reference to the UPA led by the Congress when he stated that previous administrations had permitted lateral entry into “important” roles, like ministry secretariat positions and leadership roles in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), “without following any process of reservations”.
Singh added, “Furthermore, it is well-known that the members of the infamous National Advisory Council used to run a super-bureaucracy that controlled the PMO,” another allusion to the UPA-I government’s term.
In his letter, Singh stated that the NDA administration has made an effort to create a clear process for recruiting lateral entrants, in contrast to its predecessor. The majority of significant lateral entry before to 2014 were made on an as-needed basis, he added, even in circumstances where there was supposed to be favouritism. Nevertheless, the government has worked to make the process institutionally driven, transparent, and open.
According to the minister, the prime minister “firmly believes that the lateral entry process ought to be in line with the principles of equity and social justice embedded in our Constitution, specifically with regards to the reservation provisions.” He stated that it is critical to preserve the constitutional mandate for social justice in order to provide worthy candidates from marginalised areas with their due representation in government positions.
Jairam Ramesh, the general secretary of the Congress who oversees communications, marked Singh’s letter and noted on X that the PMO’s letter to the U.P. Supreme Court (UPSC) lacks a date. He remarked, “What pathetic governance this is.” “The difference between reel and real life,” Ramesh wrote in a different post, tagging Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s Sunday and Tuesday postings on X. According to Ramesh, hypocrisy has no bounds.
Vaishnaw had stated in his article on Sunday that the Congress’s “hypocrisy” in opposing the lateral entry mechanism in senior bureaucracy is evident as Moily’s Second ARC had supported it. Vaishnaw wrote on X on Tuesday on the government’s decision to revoke the lateral entry advertisement: “PM Narendra Modi Ji has always firmly believed in social justice. The welfare of the most vulnerable members of our society has improved thanks to his programs.”