DF govt sop mela hits roadblock, 50,000 recruitments put on hold

A single daily wage earner working as a 'muster assistant' under the Maharashtra government's employment guarantee scheme (EGS) has put paid to the state government's plan of effecting nearly 50,000 fresh recruitments in government services to create a goodwill among electorate before Assembly elections scheduled to take place in October.

The Democratic Front (DF) government's plans to open the floodgates that would permit the entry of nearly 50,000 new recruits (from the open category) into state government services before going to polls has hit a roadblock that refuses to come undone before August 30, 2004, by which time the election code of conduct would come into effect.

According to a senior state government official in the general administration department (GAD), "The Aurangabad bench of the Mumbai high court had imposed a blanket ban on fresh recruitments for state government posts (except technical recruitments and primary school teachers) on February 28, 2003. Thereafter, the court permitted recruitments by the state government to fill up the backlog for backward class vacancies that remained unfilled which was the state government's constitutional obligation."

The court directed the state to first ensure the implementation of its own government resolution (GR), issued by the planning department (December 1, 1995) about absorbing the 10,000 plus daily wage workers employed as 'muster assistants' under the state-run EGS scheme.

"The state government absorbed over 6,000 such workers and around 3,500 remained to be absorbed when these workers approached the Aurangabad high court which imposed a stay. Of these 3,500 odd, on a court exemption on recruitment of backward caste workers, nearly 1,400 were absorbed. The state government also subsequently created super numerary posts (additional posts) to absorb the remaining 1,600 workers (belonging to the open category)," the official added.

On Monday (August 9), however, the state government which had approached the court to vacate its stay on fresh recruitments in the open category was in for a shock.

Even as the bench heard the government submissions of having absorbed all the 'muster assistants' into government service, the lawyers representing the workers unions produced one individual who they claimed remained to be absorbed.

"We are verifying the details of the individual and feel that the concerned individual was issued an appointment letter, but he may have not been relieved from his previous job (as muster assistant), he claims to be unabsorbed. But this is a mere technicality. As far as the state government is concerned, we have issued the orders for absorbing all these workers into service, in fact creating super-numerary posts to implement the court directive. Yet we are unable to effect fresh recruitments as announced by the DF government before the code of conduct will come into place," the official said.

For the DF government, however, this is a serious jolt to its bid to return to power in the state. It had intended to launch a recruitment drive in addition to offering free power to farmers as a means to achieving the end of returning to power in the state.