The Delhi High Court quashed the reservation in promotion and went against the OM of the Union Government yesterday. This is completely against the powers of the High Court to quash the promotions dated back in 1997.

The HC court cannot quash the Office Memorandum of the Union Government as it involves the Union Government and it must be dealt and discussed in the Supreme Court as it involves the Fundamental Rights of India’s backward class citizens. The reason cited for this annulment of the office order is arbitrary and that is this: the Government should if the backward classes are represented proportionately in the executive.

The reservation is not just a matter of feeder cadre, but it must be extended on all levels. If we look at the representation in the bureaucracy, it is clear that all the important posts in the Government are occupied by the upper caste people. This is the case at the Secretary and Additional Secretary level. It does not take a lot of examination to discover how many people are in the different posts in the Government. The DoPT can give the data in one hour and indicate how many officials from backward classes are represented in the Government.

It has been becoming clear that most of the bureaucrats coming from the backward classes have become the vehicle of social change and they have been guarding the interests of their community. Their mere presence in the executive is a deterrent for the upper caste officials and they cannot take arbitrary decisions or biased decisions based on the nepotism which is so ever present in the different organs of the Governance. The reservation in the promotion is compulsory as the backward class citizens must be represented on all the levels of the Governance.

The RSS/BJP is trying to neutralize the power of the backward classes through carrot and stick policy that was the main policy of the British. In fact, the Brahmin and Kayastha bureaucrats were the part and parcel of the British Government regime and played their part in exploiting the backward class masses. This is the same thing happening in the contemporary India. The RSS/BJP is wooing the backward class masses with tokenism and beating the “powerful” among them with the stick like quashing the “reservation in promotion”.

Actually, this battle must be fought by the opposition parties in the parliament and there must be a discussion in the “House of Parliaments” and in “media”. The media paid no attention to such an atrocious decision against India’s excluded classes. It is time for the backward classes to understand that their lives are slowly strangulated by the RSS/BJP through such actions.

The Government should prove its seriousness by overruling this decision by making the reservation in promotion the Fundamental rights in the Constitution, otherwise, the whole purpose and rationale of reservation are defeated.

The Government recently wrote a letter to autonomous institutions (there are over 500 such institutions in India like IIMs) to use only the Government appointed lawyers for any litigation with the Government. Will the Government departments come up with such a petitions against the judiciary when India’s majority is being denied their right to representation by the Judiciary? It is the case of Judicial over-activism.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist