The Hemant Soren cabinet on Thursday cleared decided to amend the eligibility criteria and syllabus for the recruitment examination conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commmission (JSSC) for subordinate staff in grade 3 and 4.
RANCHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday escalated its attacks on Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren government over its new employment policy, insisting that it will hurt the interests of Hindi speaking population and those belonging to the unreserved category in the state.
The Hemant Soren cabinet on Thursday cleared decided to amend the eligibility criteria and syllabus for the recruitment examination conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commmission (JSSC) for subordinate staff in grade 3 and 4.
The new policy, which replaces the two-stage JSSC examination with a single examination, mandates that candidates who do not belong to the notified reserved categories should have appeared in the Class 10 and 12 examinations from a school in Jharkhand to be eligible.
The new examination pattern also requires candidates to clear a language paper from a list of 12 including tribal languages besides Bangla, Odiya and Urdu. Marks in the regional language paper will be counted to calculate a candidate’s marks; Hindi and English paper would be qualifying papers.
Pratul Shahdeo of the BJP said the new policy discriminates against Hindi and people from the Hindi heartland and seeks to appease the minority community and his party will take all steps to block its implementation.
“Earlier, subjects like Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu were also in the list of main language papers. But the new policy has kept Urdu but dropped Hindi and Sanskrit. How is Urdu a regional language but Hindi is not? It smacks of appeasement. By the new policy, the government is discriminating against people living in certain regions of the state,” Shahdeo told reporters at the state unit’s headquarters in state capital Ranchi.
“In districts like Palamu and Garhwa many people speak Bhojpuri. Similarly, majority of people in Godda and Sahebganj districts speak Angika. While these languages have not been listed in the regional language, Hindi could have been a common link. But residents of these districts will not be able to appear for these posts,” he added.
The provision requiring candidates to have completed Class10 and 12 from the state, the BJP leader said it discriminates against general category students who are natives of Jharkhand. “There are many people whose children may have studied outside the state, but they are original inhabitants (of Jharkhand). Why discriminate against them,” Shahdeo added.
Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, however, denied the charges saying the new policy was in the interest of locals including the tribals, dalit, backward classes and the original inhabitants of the state. “There should be no confusion on this,” JMM principal general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya.
“Till now there were too many loopholes in the employment policy, which were used by people to challenge it in court. On the language front, instead of appeasement we are assimilating all sections of the society. Urdu was in fact declared second state language by the previous BJP goverment. As far as regional languages are concerned, its importance lies in the fact that they act as a catalyst in governance as common people who interact with grade 3 and 4 category employees are able to express their problems in a better way in their mother tongue,” said Bhattacharya.
Domicile has been a controversial issue in Jharkhand’s employment policy ever since the tribal-dominated state was carved out of Bihar in 2000. Bringing an end to the uncertainties over the issue, the previous BJP government led by Raghubar Das fixed 1985 as the base year to decide on the domicile of any resident.
The issue continues to be a controversial one and became a major talking point in the 2019 assembly elections when the BJP lost power, with other political parties, especially the JMM and Congress taking a contrary stand and promising to change it.
The employment policy notified by the Raghubar Das government also ran into legal trouble after the high court struck down the provision to reserve jobs in 11 scheduled districts to residents of the respective districts.
