Amidst tussle, NCSC panel to probe all of Centre’s de-reservation proposals from last three years

De-reservation is the practice of filling up a reserved vacancy as an unreserved one and is allowed only in exceptional circumstances. File photo: Special arranegment. Amidst an ongoing tussle over de-reserving Central government quota posts, particularly in promotion vacancies, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has now decided to “comprehensively review” all proposals to de-reserve government posts that have come from the Centre in the last three years.De-reservation is the practice of filling up a reserved vacancy as an unreserved one and is allowed only in exceptional circumstances.The NCSC and the Centre have been clashing over the issue of de-reserving government posts for the last two years with the commission saying that de-reservation proposals are often incomplete and do not reveal alternate efforts made to fill the reserved posts, a “recurring issue” it has decided to examine and make recommendations to ensure proper implementation of the reservation policy.The move by the Commission to investigate de-reservation proposals from the Union government comes soon after nudging from the National Commission led to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to revise its existing procedure on de-reservation to double the time that Commissions for SCs and STs get to object to such proposals from two weeks to one month.Specific exceptionsAccording to regulations for government recruitment issued by the DoPT, there is a general ban on the practice of de-reserving posts with very specific exceptions that allow for this. The rules allow de-reserving a direct recruitment vacancy only in cases where a “vacancy in a Group ‘A’ service cannot be allowed to remain vacant in public interest”.However, for such a de-reservation exercise, a proposal for it has to be examined first by the National Commissions for SCs, STs, or OBCs (whichever is applicable) and then by a Committee of Secretaries of the concerned Departments, the DoPT and the Social Justice Ministry. Following this, the final decision is left to the Minister of Personnel and Training.In case of de-reserving posts for promotion vacancies, where currently reservations for SC and ST categories are applicable, the procedure allows for the concerned recruiting Department or Ministry to have the final say even though they are required to submit a proposal to the National Commissions and DoPT and wait for their comments on it.In the latest Full Commission meeting this year on June 4, the NCSC noted that it had decided to undertake a full review of all de-reservation proposals from the Centre with the objective of examining “recurring issues” and formulating “appropriate recommendations for ensuring effective implementation of the reservation policy”.Key agenda in meetingsThe current National Commission for Scheduled Castes, headed by Gujarat BJP leader and writer Kishore Makwana, has been grappling with the issue of de-reservation proposals from the Centre ever since it took charge. In four out of the five Full Commission meetings held since 2024, the issue of de-reservation has featured high on the agenda of the NCSC, according to the meeting minutes.In these meetings, proposals for de-reservations have come for posts in public sector undertakings, positions in the Ministries of Law, Housing and Urban Affairs, the Narcotics Control Bureau, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, among other ministries and departments.According to the minutes of the Full Commission meetings, none of these proposals was agreed to by the NCSC, which had flagged the consistent shortcomings in these proposals and also initiated the process to get DoPT to review the procedure and timeline for seeking comments from the NCSC on these proposals.While the revised procedure of the DoPT on de-reserving promotion vacancy posts has conceded to the push for more time to the Commission for its suggestions, the NCSC has also been pushing