Top court ruling a relief to 40K SC/ST staff

The state government on Friday issued an oral direction to Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) to start making preparations for restoring consequential promotions to its Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes employees following the Supreme Court upholding the Karnataka law that grants the benefit to those employees.

“We have got the judgement copy. The Law Department is examining it. Appropriate steps will be taken in this regard soon. At the same time, directions have been issued orally to start the process of restoring the promotion and other benefits to the SC/ST employees,” a senior State government official said.

As many as 40,000 SC/ST employees heaved a sigh of relief due to the apex court ruling. Hundreds of these employees, from group ‘A’ to ‘C,’ were badly affected as they either faced demotion or were deprived of promotions in the past few months. This was because the government had implemented the earlier ruling of SC which struck down the promotion policy, citing absence of data that determines inadequacy in representation, backwardness and overall efficiency.

As per data obtained from the DPAR, about 3,700 SC and ST employees were demoted from their posts and promotion of about 5,000 employees was put on hold since 2017. Besides, financial benefits of hundreds of retired SC/ST employees’ were cut because of the earlier ruling.

This had caused serious resentment among a section of Cabinet ministers, especially those belonging to SC/ST communities.

Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and Social Welfare Minister Priyank Kharge had taken up the cause of the employees and even threatened to resign if the government went ahead with the process of demotion.

The H D Kumaraswamy government was in a quandary: It was legally bound to comply with the SC order (to roll back the promotion), while, on the other end, pressure was mounting from a section of ministers to protect the affected employees.

Parameshwara and Kharge were arguing that the court had not stayed the implementation of the Karnataka Extension of Consequential Seniority to Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (to the posts in the Civil Services of the State) Act, 2018.

The then Congress government in 2018 had enacted the law to circumvent the SC order. The government was, however, shying away from implementing the law as its review petition (seeking review of the order annulling the reservation in promotion policy) was still before the Supreme Court.