Haryana Govt Passes Bill To Provide 75% Reservation For Locals In Private Jobs

Giving 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs was a key poll promise by Chautala’s JJP, which is the BJP’s coalition partner in the state.

(File Photo/ Getty)

Chandigarh: Following one of the key poll-promises, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the alliance partner Jannayak Janata Party (JJP)-led government in Haryana on Thursday passed the Bill providing 75 per cent reservation in private jobs to people from the state. The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Bill, 2020 will be providing a quota for local people in private-sector jobs that offer a salary of less than Rs 50,000 a month. As per the new bill, only 10 percent of the recruitment by a company needs to be from the district in which it is located – the rest of the quota can be filled from other districts in the state. The quota will initially apply for 10 years, according to the bill which now needs the assent of the state Governor to become law. The bill will be covering private companies, societies, trusts, and partnership firms, among others, in the state. It will be providing training to eligible local candidates when qualified people are not available. The bill defined local candidates as those domiciled in the state. Giving 75 percent reservation in private sector jobs was a key poll promise by Chautala’s JJP, which is the BJP’s coalition partner in the state. But JJP MLA Ram Kumar Gautam criticized the move citing that the law will set a wrong precedent and other states will stop hiring youth from Haryana. “If other states say they will not take Haryana youths, where will they go? Can you stop any person hailing from another state from working here? This is wrong,” he said. Senior Congress leader and former CM of the state Bhupinder Singh Hooda also objected to the option with companies to recruit only 10 percent of their employees from one district. While praising the move Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the bill would go a long way in providing employment to local youth. “The influx of a large number of migrants competing for low-paid jobs places a significant impact on local infrastructure and housing and leads to the proliferation of slums,” it said. It led to environmental and health issues that are acutely felt in the state’s urban areas, affecting livelihood and the quality of life, the bill said. Fulfilling the post-poll promise, deputy CM of the state Dushyant Chautala tweeted “Therefore, giving preference to local candidates in low-paid jobs is socially, economically and environmentally desirable and any such preference would be in the interest of the general public.” “Today our promise to lakhs of the youth of Haryana has been fulfilled and now Haryanvi youth will have 75 percent of jobs in the private sector,” he said. He said this moment, coming exactly a year after the BJP-JJP government came into being, is an emotional one for him. Chautala said any new factory or established factories advertising vacancies will now have to fulfill the quota. Earlier this year, the BJP-JJP government had failed to get Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya’s assent to an ordinance on the job quota. Narain had sent the ordinance to the President for his review. The state government had then said that it will table a job quota bill during the Vidhan Sabha’s monsoon session. For the domicile status, a person should be born in Haryana or have lived there for at least 15 years. Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala introduced the bill in the House here on Thursday, when the assembly began the second part of its monsoon session.