National Conference President Farooq Abdullah has said that the general category will be pushed to the same position as Schedule Casts were facing in 1947 if the reservation issue is not addressed.
Abdullah said that the open-merit students are increasingly complaining of being left out of jobs and professional courses. He said the increasing quotas are taking jobs at the cost of merit.
Today, J&K Assembly Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather said that he has issued directions to the state government to examine the regional imbalance in EWS certificates. Abdullah termed the increased reservations as an injustice with respect to open merit and asked the government to address this injustice. “We have to make an effort to address this injustice somehow.
Because it has not been cleared by the BJP-ruled Centre, but even after 10 months, the revised quota policy could not be implemented. If we keep on increasing reservations, then the people (general category) who are outside the reservation system will be pushed to the same position as Scheduled Castes were in 1947,” said Abdullah. 50 per cent of jobs will now remain available for Open Merit, according to sources. Against a BPL population of 55 per cent in Kashmir, only 8 per cent of people have been given an EWS certificate, according to Lone. The remaining 92 per cent of the EWS certificates have been issued in the Jammu region, which has a 45 per cent BPL population as per UT criteria. As per official data, over 26,000 EWS certificates have been issued in J&K over the last two years. Of these, 24,000 have been issued in Jammu and just 2,000 in the Kashmir Valley.
“I have directed the government to examine the issue and see wherever there is scope for improvement to avoid injustice to any section of society,” said Rather.
In December last year, Omar Abdullah’s government approved a new reservation policy giving more representation to the General category. Sajad Lone, President of the Peoples Conference, presented a detailed note before the J&K assembly.
