The Eastern Naga Students’ Federation has on Wednesday submitted a petition to Nagaland’s Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio appealing for implementation of ‘One Person One Reservation’ for the seven tribes of Eastern Nagaland to address the stagnant employment rate of people from the region.
The federation said that in its quest to find out why even after 45 years of the implementation of the Backward Tribes Job Reservation Policy, the employment rate of Eastern Nagas was only 13%, it has found out that ‘the bane of the state of stagnancy of employment rate of eastern Nagaland is a single person benefitting/enjoying more than one BT quota.’
ENSF explained: ‘In this, once the aspirant cracks the exam, he begins to target for higher post. And as and when he secures the desired post as targeted, he resigns from the previous post. It is crystal clear that once a person resigns from the post which he secured from BT quota, the post so resigned is no more treated as BT quota and is advertised as fresh vacancy in the ensuing recruitment. Consequently, that particular tribe is at loss of one BT quota. The said practices have been doing the round since day one of the implementation of 25% Job reservation. In this manner, many posts have been losing every year. For instance, there is a loss of 44 posts within the span of ten years in between 2009-2019 as per the RTI reply of 2019. So, what if an RTI is filed from 1977 to till date? How many post must have had been gone lost within the span of 45 years? Thus, if Government of the day does not correct the existing woe, the intent/objective behind implementing 25% job reservation will be a total failure.’
The Federation further stated that if this practice continues, the aspirations of the Eastern Nagas ‘to keep/remain at par’ with the other Naga tribes will ‘remain a far-reaching futility’.
ENSF also said that during its 21st Federal Assembly at IT DAN, Noklak, it, along with its seven federating, had unanimously adopted a resolution on 4 March 2022 for ‘One Person One Reservation’ and pressed on the government for a quick implementation of the same.
‘In this regard, the federation demands three-point measure to tackle with the matter at hand-
- To circumscribe the aspirants from availing more than one post from 25% job reservation under Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) through an official notification from the concerned Department.
- To circumscribe the aspirants from availing more than one post from 25% job reservation under Nagaland Staff Selection Board (NSBB) through an official notification from the concerned Department.
- To circumscribe the aspirants from availing more than one post from job reservation under District Level Recruitment Board (DLRB), and 25% Job reservation in any other recruitment process followed by any Departmental Recruitment Board (DRB)/Corporation/Board/CSS vacancy etc where the vacancy post are advertised to be filled through an official notification from the concerned Department.
For eg: A person who has availed a quota in Nagaland Public Service Commission cannot avail another quota in the same NPSC examination; however, he/she can avail in NSSB.’