General category employees tweet chief minister against 85th amendment

CHANDIGARH:General category employees today tweeted Amrinder Singh Chief Minister Punjab and Navjot Sidhu Congress President Punjab against the proposal to implement the 85th amendment in the state, said V K Gupta a spokesperson of the General category Welfare Federation Punjab.

It may be mentioned that Chief Minister Punjab announced on the independence day that his government is committed to implementing the 85th. amendment in the state. For the last 10 days, general category employees including OBC and backward classes have been protesting daily in different cities of the state against the implementation of 85th. amendment without
acing on the observations and guidelines of the Supreme Court. The members have submitted memorandums to the congress president, chief minister, and local MLAs. , it has also been demanded setting up of a general category welfare commission as promised by the Congress party at the time of last assembly elections.

V K Gupta said that in case the 85th. amendment is implemented all the top posts in all the departments and corporations will go to SC/ST employees and general category employees will have to forgo their chances for promotion forever.
Even today the percentage share of their posts exceeds the share quota as a number of SC/ST employees also enters on a merit basis, under such circumstances where is the necessity to implement the 85th. amendment.
General Category Welfare Federation cautioned that Punjab Government should not take hasty decisions which have very long implications and cannot be reversed.

V K Gupta spokesperson said that in the year 2018 the direct recruitment of 272311 employees was made and out of these 66224, SC/ST employees were recruited against their share quota and 19758 against merit thus the total recruitment of SC/ST employees exceeds 25% of total posts.
Similarly, in promotions, their share quota is 22.34% in the group posts and 19.99% in group B posts.
The above data shows that the SC/ST category employees are fully represented in all the government departments as per their share quota posts and in most of the cases they are overrepresented. There is a need to identify creamy layer employees before deciding to implement the 85th. amendment in Punjab.
In case the government proceeds with the approval of the amendment, the employees will not support the Congress party in coming assembly elections.