The concept of reservation for marginal communities has its genesis in the Constitution of India.  Articles 15, 16, 17, 46, 164, 330, 332, 334, 335, 338, 340, 341, 342 & 366 of the Constitution of India have provisions of reservation concerning SC & OBC. The aspect of reservation is construed as a component of ’Positive Discrimination’ on the part of the state to ensure inclusive development of the marginal classes. 

In West Bengal, the policy on Reservation in services and posts is administered through “The West Bengal Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of vacancies in Services and Posts) Act, 1976”, The West Bengal Backward Classes (Other than SC&ST) (Reservation in Services and Posts) Act 2012 and “The West Bengal Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of vacancies in Services and Posts) Rules, 1976”. The Acts and rules have been amended from time to time as per the requirements. 

Reservations in higher educational institutions are guided by ‘The West Bengal State Higher Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2013’, and ‘The West Bengal State Higher Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Rules, 2013’. This Act and Rule are of comparatively recent origin.

 

 

A. Reservation in services and posts for Scheduled Castes.

 

Rules of Business of the Backward Classes Welfare Department (No 865-Home (cons)/R2R (Cons)-08/2013 dated 28/11/2013) mandates the Department to deal with all matters pertaining to the reservation of posts and seats for SCs and OBCs. Consequently the activities of the Department are distinctly cut out. 

 

1. Checking of Register of Appointments- All the appointing authorities spread over different offices, institutions, schools and colleges are compulsorily bound to maintain Register of Appointment (RoA) in prescribed format as per Rule 3 of West Bengal SC & ST (Reservation of Vacancies in Services & Posts Rule, 1976) both for direct recruits and for promotional appointments. These RoAs are live documents to depict the status of reservation in regard to appointments made at different level. The Reservation Cell of the Department along with that of the district checks and verifies these RoAs mandatorily to arrest tendencies of deviation in abiding by the dictum of Reservation. The Department has checked 3658 RoAs while the district Reservation cells under the guidance of the Project Officers-cum-District Welfare Officers (PO-cum-DWO) and directions of District Magistrates (DM) who are the Commissioner of Reservation for that particular district have checked 940 RoAs. This decentralization of work has really increased the performance of the Department in this regard. 

2. Guidance in maintenance of RoAs-It is true that all the appointing Authorities are not adept in maintaining RoA and properly appointing the reserved category candidates. It becomes the duty of the Reservation Cell in the Department and in the districts to guide the appointing authorities in properly doing the work. In course of guiding the appointing authorities, the inadvertent mistakes and the mistakes emerging out of cognition-gap are appropriately addressed as per Section 6(2) of “The West Bengal Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of vacancies in Services and Posts) Act, 1976 and Section 7(2)of The West Bengal Backward Classes (other than SC &ST) (Reservation of vacancies in Services and Posts) Act, 2012. The Reservation cell of the Department in the 2016-17 fiscal has guided 2356 institutions while the districts have handled 4000 authorities.

3. Initiatives for proper implementation of the provisions of Reservation-   “Everything changes and nothing stands still’’ was the comment of Plato during one of his discourse (Cratylus). The Department rose to the occasion and made provisions for maintenance of RoA in accordance with the different related orders of other departments without compromising the basic position of ensuring opportunity to reserved candidates. Some important steps in this regard were-

a) Making provisions for maintenance of RoAs centrally in Universities covering all the teaching posts of all departments rather than its maintenance in segregated fashion as per the University Grants’ Commission’s Guideline.

b) Providing for the maintenance of RoAs so that the transfers of the employees from one institution to another of similar nature can be implemented without compromising the basic reservation position as required by the School education department.

c) Providing hand-holding support and guidance to different departments and organizations like Kolkata Police, newly created Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation and Kolkata Municipal Corporation so that they reconstruct their RoAs in a proper fashion and ensure the reservation policies of the Government.

d) Providing intense coaching to some of the departments to implement effectively horizontal reservations like that of Home-Guards and Para-teachers as per the order of the Hon’ble High Court.  

e) Checking the Annual statement of total number of employees (members of SC & ST) as on 1st January of every year submitted by all the departments under the State Government (in Appendix-II); annual return of Appointments made during the calendar year ending on 31st December for direct recruitment (Appendix-IIIA) and annual return of appointments made during the calendar year ending on 31st December on account of promotion.

f) The department neither regularizes nor authenticates the 50-point roster of promotion. Yet on receipt of complaints, it ensures that the selection against vacancies reserved for SC & ST is made from among those SC and ST employees, who fall within the normal zone of consideration. The Department also ensures that the number of SC-ST employees appointed on promotion to any unreserved vacancy in a service or post to be filled up by promotion is not deducted from the quota reserved in such service or post for the SC or ST.

4. Penal Actions against the alleged deliberate Delinquents- The Department does not compromise if it finds that the appointing authorities are trying to offer a blind eye to the aspect of Reservation. Apart from issuing warning and cautioning the appointing authorities for proven delinquencies, complaint has been also filed before  Hon’ble  Court for alleged non-compliance with Reservation norms after securing the sanction of the Government. 

The department intervened when a University had appointed teachers of reserved categories who originally belonged to other states but were wrongly enjoying benefits of reservation in West Bengal. The University subsequently removed these teaching faculties.

5. Training of the Inspectors of the Department- Inspectors are the cutting edge of the Department as well are the interface of the Department with the target clientele. Consequently it was felt that the Inspectors need to be well-equipped to handle different activities of the Department.  Training was conceived at two levels-

a)  Refresher Training course for the existing Inspectors and Additional Inspectors. The training programme was decentralized and the training was conducted in 10 districts covering 204 inspectors.

b)  Induction Level training was conducted in 2 batches at Administrative Training Institute and BRSIPRD, Kalyani.  All the relevant aspects, rules and acts were deliberated upon in the training sessions with hands-on exercises.

6. Publication of a Compendium of Orders Acts and Rules of Reservation-As a necessary requirement for expansion of the cognitive map of the Inspectors and the target group, two Compendia of Orders, Acts and Rules pertaining to the aspects of Reservation, caste certificate have been published. In fact the first compendium of the Department was published in 2002 and after 14 long years another effort has been taken in this regard. All the Departments, District, sub-divisions and blocks have been provided free copies of the books and are also being sold to interested people and organizations from Cultural Research Institute, Kankurgachi, Kolkata.

7. Special Recruitment Drive for Filling up Vacancies Reserved for SCs -As per provisions of the ‘West Bengal Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of Vacancies in Services and posts) Act, 1976’, 22% jobs in the State Govt. sector are reserved and to be filled up by Scheduled Caste candidates. But, even after many years, the actual numbers of SC employees is far short of the required percentage. So the State Govt. decided to make an exercise to collect data on the existing number of the SC employees of the various Govt. Departments and Directorates. Departments having considerable number of employees were analyzed. It was found out that there was shortfall of 9,923 SC employees in 16 large Departments / Directorates. Cabinet has approved that in first phase 3354 vacancies are to be considered for recruitment while in the second phase 6099 SC vacancies will be in the fray. In the 1st phase by continuous effort of the Department and through close and intense follow-up the total recruitment figures surpassed the target as 4142 SC candidates were recruited. The increase in number can be attributed to the identification of the new vacancies which arose in the meantime. The process of recruitment of the 2nd phase of Special Recruitment Drive has just commenced. 

8. Plans for future- A significant step has been taken by the Department in converting nearly all the activities into online for transparency and ease of access. Towing this line efforts are being taken to make the entire activity of maintenance of RoA online. This will not only ease out operation in G2C realm but also will in the long run ensure that no deviation from reservation norms take place.