The Committee on Reservation Roster on Monday decided to request the Meghalaya state government to extend its terms of reference beyond the roster system by allowing discussion on the job reservation policy.
After chairing its first meeting, chairperson of the Committee and Minister-in-charge of Law, Ampareen Lyngdoh said, “We are going to request the government of Meghalaya to include a discussion on the job reservation policy at the earliest.”
This came after the Voice of the People Party (VPP), which has four MLAs, has decided not to be part of the Committee until the government agrees to discuss the job reservation policy. Its president Ardent Basaiawmoit has entered the 7th day of his fasting to pressurize the government to review the 1972 job reservation policy.
Lyngdoh said all political parties including Garo National Council (GNC) had attended the meeting except for VPP.
There was a unanimous agreement on the proposed roster and the committee has decided to forward certain recommendations to the government of Meghalaya for its consideration. However, the VPP is still yet to be part of the discussion.
According to her, if a roster system has to be agreed upon all political parties should be a part of the deliberation on the issue.
“We, therefore, are going to request the government of Meghalaya to include a discussion on the job reservation policy at the earliest so that we may give an opportunity to the VPP to present its point of view to the committee,” Lyngdoh said while adding, “Having said that therefore, we will at the same time also send a recommendation to the government of Meghalaya to allow all political parties also to do the same exercise as it would skewed if only one political party would be given that opportunity.”
She further informed that once the VPP is being given a fair chance to present its views, the committee will take a call at a further date as to how to go about handling all the matters that are brought before its purview.
The law minister added that the committee will again meet on May 31, to give an opportunity to all political parties to bring forward suggestions and observations so that we are able to take at least this one agenda forward in letter and spirit.
“This way, people of the state may feel that we are a committee that is inclusive in nature and we would like all points of view to be heard before any final decisions can be taken on this matter,” she said.
Appealing to the VPP to attend the next meeting of the committee, Lyngdoh said, “We will extend an invitation once again to the VPP to attend this meeting providing the government of Meghalaya permits us to extend our terms of reference to also discuss the job reservation policy.”
She also assured that the minutes of today’s meeting will be sent to the chief minister for his consideration and said as it would be unfair not to include the VPP because every political thought in the state is important.
When asked, the chairperson admitted that discussion of the roster in isolation from the reservation policy does not stand around and said, “It will only stand around if you open discussion on certain aspects of the reservation policy as well”.
“Therefore, if you want to be inclusive, we may extend the main discussion on the job reservation policy,” she said while adding that leaders of other political parties in their deliberations during the meeting today also referred to the other points of the reservation policy. “Hence, it is by default that we anyways had to discuss the reservation policy (during the meeting),” she added.
On the other hand, the minister said that the committee would leave it to the wisdom of the state government to decide on the request made.
“We don’t know whether the chief minister will allow this committee to take that up or whether he will form a committee of experts or whether he himself will chair any committee. We leave it to the wisdom of the government. We are not mandated. A committee is not a cabinet. Any policy decision is taken at the cabinet,” she said.
Meanwhile, Lyngdoh said that various office memorandums (OMs) have come up over the last few four-five decades in regards to the reservation policy.
“All of those OMs, particularly the OM of May 2022 have to be reviewed. If you have to have a roster in place and that roster application is prospective all OMs will have to be redundant, a new OM will have to come into place and that is how a government function but we are not authorized to say that this is what is going to happen we can only lend suggestions because we have been mandated to only discuss with political parties which is the exercise we have engaged with,” she added.
