Modi Government’s Focus On Social Justice, Transparent Mechanism Led to Withdrawal of Lateral Entry Ad: Sources

The Central government on Tuesday afternoon announced the decision to withdraw the UPSC advertisement for ‘lateral entry’. The letter written by DoPT minister Dr Jitender Singh was sent to UPSC chairman Preeti Sudan.

Political war of words soon broke out between the government and the opposition. Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav and other leaders, called it the victory of the opposition.

Government sources, however, indicated that the decision was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the point that “social justice, in a diverse nation like India, was the priority for his government”.

‘ALIGNING WITH PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, EQUITY’: WHAT THE LETTER SAID

The Modi government has advertised lateral entries four times so far, with the highest number of posts , 45, this time, as there was a backlog. “Mission recruitment or rozgar melas are likely to be started again by the Centre. Rozgar melas have reduced vacancies significantly,” sources said.

“…I urge the UPSC to cancel the advertisement for the lateral entry recruitment issue on August 17, 2024. This step would be a significant advance in the pursuit of social justice and empowerment.” – reads the letter written by Singh.

The letter further reads: “…While most of the major lateral entries before 2014 were made in an ad hoc manner including cases of alleged favouritism, efforts of our govt have been to make the process institutionally driven, transparent and open. The PM is of the firm belief that the process of lateral entry must be aligned with the principles of equity and social justice enshrined in our Constitution, particularly concerning the provisions of reservations. For the PM, reservation in public employment is a cornerstone of our social justice framework, aimed at addressing historical injustices and promoting inclusivity… Since these positions have been treated as specialised and designated as single cadre posts, there has been no provision for reservation in these appointments. These aspects need to be reviewed and reformed.”

NO CHANGE FOR EXISTING LATERAL ENTRIES: DISTRICT-WISE REVIEW, OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS

The government has indicated that it will do a district-wise review of the entire system. On the demand of the opposition parties and some NDA partners to bring in reservation in lateral entry, top sources said the government is open to various suggestions.

It is also known that 57 lateral entrants with domain expertise are working with various ministries currently. “We will study whether reservation can be applied and how it can be applied because it is a complicated system,” sources told network 18.

“We followed the entire mechanism with focus on transparency, and we did not want to do anything arbitrarily and selectively,” sources said, adding an ad hoc system, which existed earlier, also smacked of lack of transparency and promotion of favouritism.

Sources said the existing lateral entries will not be impacted by this withdrawal. In fact, the government has already started working on a mechanism for it. It is first studying the system to see how contractual jobs can have reservation too.