In the second week of March, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government has decided to initiate a massive recruitment drive for filling up 80,039 vacant government posts in 27 departments. The exercise will require ₹7,300 crore annually. He also said that the government will henceforth identify vacancies in advance and publish an annual calendar for recruitment. He promised that the entire process will be done in a transparent manner.
Other than recruitment for uniformed services like the police, Mr. Rao raised the upper limit by 10 years for all direct recruitment. With this, the upper age limit will be 44 years for Open Categories, 49 years for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes, and 54 years for the physically challenged. The huge direct recruitment drive will be accompanied by regularisation of the services of 11,103 contract workers who are already employed in existing vacancies, he said.
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Unemployed youth were jubilant hearing these announcements. TRS cadres took to streets to celebrate what they termed a ‘path-breaking effort’ of the Chief Minister, which kept in mind a slogan of the Telangana movement: ‘Water, Funds and Appointments’.
The mega recruitment drive was made possible with a Presidential Order issued with the primary objective of providing 95% reservation in favour of local candidates in State-run institutions, corporations, societies and institutions. This means that local candidates will be recruited from the lowest cadre of office subordinates to the highest cadre of revenue division officers. Telangana is the only State in the country that has granted 95% reservation for locals in government services. But this does not mean that the remaining 5% is allotted to others. The government ensured that a provision enabled local candidates to compete for the remaining 5% too.
The BJP was quick to take credit for Mr. Rao’s decision. Karimnagar MP and BJP State President Bandi Sanjay said the ‘pressure’ built up by his party was the reason for the recruitment drive. “The Pay Revision Commission headed by C.R. Biswal has put the total vacancies at 1.90-lakh. How can Government only notify 80,039 vacancies? The pressure will continue till the balance one lakh posts are filled,” Mr. Sanjay said. Congress State chief and Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy went a step further and said the government owes at least ₹1.2 lakh to each unemployed youth. As many as 28 lakh youth had registered with the Telangana State Public Service Commission. He also wondered why the vacancies caused by the retirement of 90,000 employees had not been not notified.
While Mr. Rao blamed hurdles in bifurcation issues for the delayed recruitment drive, the TRS government now needs to tread cautiously and complete the process in a time-bound manner. On the one hand, the mega announcement has generated a ray of hope for unemployed, educated youth, but on the other, there could be a serious backlash if the government delays the recruitment drive any further. Any delay in issuing a notification is bound to create more unrest among the unemployed youth who have been waiting for years for the job notification.
Just as it rolled out the Dalit Bandhu scheme to provide ₹10 lakh as financial assistance directly to the bank accounts of Dalit beneficiaries to start micro enterprises, the government is hoping to make the job notification its trump card in a bid to win back the unemployed youth ahead of the Assembly elections slated next year.
ravi.reddy@thehindu.co.in
