As many as 28,713 posts under the reserved category are lying vacant in 10 major ministries and departments.
The Centre has swung into action to fill the vacancies of more than 28,000 posts under the backlog reserved category in various Central government ministries and departments.
Sources said the Department of Personnel and Training, which monitors the progress of filling up of reserved category vacancies, has had six meetings in this regard and the process of recruitment may start soon. “These ministries/departments have been asked to take expeditious action regarding unfilled reserved backlog vacancies,” sources added.
It is to be noted that Indian Railways has already started the world’s biggest recruitment drive for filling up about 1.10 lakh vacancies.
As per details provided by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, there are as many as 28,713 posts under the reserved category—Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs)— that are lying vacant in 10 major ministries and departments, including public sector banks and public sector undertakings (PSUs) that have the majority of employees in the Central government.
There were as many as 92,589 backlog vacancies under the reserved category in 2012. However, the government has filled 20,975 vacancies for SCs, 15,874 vacancies for STs and 27,027 vacancies for OBCs in the last four years.
In 2014, a committee, under the chairmanship of the then Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, was constituted to make an analysis of the reasons for non-filling up of reserved vacancies and to suggest remedial measures. Based on the recommendations of this committee, the DoPT issued instructions to all ministries and departments to constitute in-house committee to identify backlog reserved vacancies, studying its root cause and taking up measures to remove these factors and fill the vacancies through special recruitment drives.
As per Constitutional provisions, reservation is provided to SCs, STs and OBCs at 15%, 7.5% and 27% respectively in case of direct recruitment on all India basis by open competition. In case of direct recruitment to Group C posts, normally attracting candidates from a locality or a region, the percentage of reservation is generally fixed on the basis of proportion of their population in the respective states.
As per government records, the representation of SCs, STs and OBCs in the posts and services under the Central government is 17.49%, 8.47% and 21.57% respectively.
Representation of OBCs is found to be less as compared to the percentage of reservation for them.