Gandhinagar, The Gujarat government on Sunday evening announced that ignoring the controversial 2018 GR (government resolution), it will carry out the women LRD recruitment as usual, seeking to end the imbroglio that put the government in a fix as the 2018 decision had started an agitation among reserved class category aspirants.
A high-level meeting, held at Chief Minister Vijay Rupani’s residence here, decided to ignore the controversial 2018 GR in the LRD recruitment for women. The GR, which reversed the practice on since 1997, sought to fill the reserved seats initially and then the rest of the seats for the general category, thus denying meritorious aspirants of the SC/ST and OBC category the right to avail recruitment from general seats. This had created a war of sorts between the reserved and the general category candidates.
The Gujarat government got itself in a fix when the girl aspirants of LRD recruitment had started agitating since more than two months back against the recruitment norms described in the 2018 GR, which, according to them, were against their constitutional rights of availing reservation and also against an SC order.
Hundreds of girls of the reserved category of the society had been carrying out the agitation at the Satyagrah Chhavani ground since December last year and the 2018 GR was also challenged in the Gujarat High Court. This had forced the Gujarat government to assure the court of coming out with an amended GR in place of the 2018 one.
The government found itself again into a fix when this announcement was made, as then general category aspirants came out on the streets in the state capital to agitate against this decision as they felt that now they were being deprived of their rights.
Thus, the government was in a fix and not wanting to displease any class or category, the decision process was being delayed. Finally, Sunday’s high level meeting ensued where it has been decided that the government will carry out the recruitment of LRD as usual without taking cognizance of the 2018 GR.
“Every girl aspirant availing the minimum requirement of 62.5 marks, irrespective of their caste or class, will be recruited. The 2018 GR will be disregarded by the Gujarat government and the recruitment will be carried out as it has been since 1997 for women reservation. The biggest advantage for all the aspirants is that we have lowered the minimum required marks to 62.5 percentage which will benefit more aspirants,” said Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel.
According to Patel, now the general category seats has been raised from 421 to 834, the OBC category seats from 1,834 to 3,248, those for Schedule Tribes (ST) from 476 to 511 seats and for Scheduled Castes (SC) category, from 346 to 588 seats. The non reserved category will also have seats increase from 421 to 880 seats.
However, it has been learnt that the non-reserved category aspirants are unhappy with the latest decision and have expressed that they will continue with their agitation.
The feelings on the other side were also not encouraging, as they want the 2018 GR to be totally scrapped.
