Promotion Quota Bill, What is it and why it must be stopped ?

Several Politicians are trying to pass Promotion Quota Bill 2012 which amends the constitution in order to justify the additional privilege in promotion to people belonging to Scheduled Cast and Scheduled Tribes.

The Details and Salient Features of the Bill are as follows:

The Constitution (One hundred and seventeenth) Amendment Bill, introduced in Rajya Sabha on September 4, seeks to amend at least four articles of the constitution to enable the government to provide quotas in promotions for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes who constitute roughly 25 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion population.

It seeks to remove the term ‘inadequate representation’ mentioned in Article 16(4A) to justify quotas in promotions and appointments. It also delinks the term ‘efficiency of administration’ from the claims of SC and ST for jobs and promotions, mentioned in Article 335.

Article 335 of the constitution states that the claims of the SC and ST have to be balanced with maintaining efficiency in administration. The bill states the amendment will override the provision of Article 355.

The Bill provides that all the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes notified in the constitution shall be deemed to be backward.

Why it must be opposed?

“This is dividing society. The general, the backwards, all other classes will be affected with this reservation. How can you benefit one by taking away rights of others,”  SP leader Naresh Agarwal said.

“All classes of society, whether it is SC, backward classes, or minorities, should come into the mainstream,” BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.

Sources had said that the support in FDI was a political trade-off and that the government could give in to Mayawati’s demands on the bill promotions in government jobs.