Recent guidelines issued by the Telangana government for implementation of horizontal reservations methodology to fill up women’s quota as directed by the Supreme Court are feared to deprive the women belonging to underprivileged sections of their rightful opportunities.
Orders issued by the department for Women, Children, Disabled and Senior Citizens a few days ago, summarily removed the roster points methodology for earmarking posts for women.
SC defined quotas
The 2007 SC order in case of Rajesh Kumar Daria Vs. Rajasthan Public Service Commission, cited in the order, defined the ‘social’ reservations as those in favour of SC, ST and BC categories which should be allotted vertically, meaning that the reserved posts should not be filled up with candidates from these sections who succeeded by merit in open competition. Quotas for women, disabled, sports and other categories — defined as ‘special’ reservations — should be filled up horizontally, meaning that if there are enough number of women candidates already selected by merit within SC, ST, OBC quotas, no separate women sub-quota is needs to be filled up under these sections.
Last year, responding to a petition, the Telangana High Court too reiterated the Apex Court judgement, and directed the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) to apply the horizontal reservations principle in implementation of the 33.33% women’s reservation in its recruitments.
The petitioners wanted the HC to instruct the government to follow horizontal reservation for women candidates and set aside the system of following 100 roster points prescribed in Rules 22 AND 22-A of Telangana State and Subordinate Service Rules-1996.
High Court directions
The High Court has directed that the open category seats should be filled up first based on merit, and then the socially reserved posts. Finally, if the quota for special reservations is already filled up by the candidates as part of the social reservations, then there is no need for further quota. If not, then the required number of special reservation candidates must be accommodated within their respective social categories.
The government order issued subsequent to this judgement has done away with the roster points for women’s reservations in each of the reserved categories.
Candidates belonging to these sections, however, point out that where the number of vacancies are limited, the women from the reserved categories stand to lose in the absence of roster point criterion.
As per the roster point system, a roster is prepared and circulated by the General Administration department, which specifies the order of reservations in which each post should be filled up. The roster point for each quota is determined based on the percentage of quota allotted to that particular category.
According to the roster, the first post is reserved for women from open category, the second post to SC woman, and the third, to open category general, and so on.
Fewer opportunities
“When there were only three posts, for instance, quotas would be filled up earlier based on the roster points. Now, all the three would go to open category, with the third post earmarked for open category women. Where is the scope for women from underprivileged sections?” asks Bharathi (name changed), a candidate aspiring for a government job.
According to the new system, for an SC woman to get a job under quota, there should be at least 16 posts, she points out, saying that the social category women would get opportunities only when the vacancies are substantial in number.
