Quota in private cos can be caught in legal tangle

NEW DELHI: Union social justice and empowerment minister Meira Kumar’s adventurism has not gone down well with the government leadership.

Her keenness to push through her pet project of extending the quota regime to the private sector was seen as being fraught with Constitutional and legal difficulties by none other than attorney general Milon Banerjee.

The AG was one of the three legal experts whose views had been sought by the GoM set up by the Manmohan Singh government to look into the demand for extending the quota regime to the private sector. By a majority opinion, the committee negatived the proposal on the ground that it would not stand the test of legal scrutiny.

While Mr Banerjee and eminent jurist Fali S Nariman pointed out that the proposal to have reservations for the SCs and STs in the private sector could not be implemented without amending the Constitution, Justice (retd.) K Ramaswamy thought otherwise.

The GoM, which was headed by Union agriculture, food and civil supplies minister Sharad Pawar and had, amongst its members, pro-quota activists such as Ram Vilas Paswan and Meira Kumar, thought it prudent to seek legal opinion in view of the sensitive nature and constitutionality of the issues involved.

The foremost question nagging the GoM members was whether a Constitutional amendment would be required to enforce the demand. The mandate conferred upon the team of experts was to examine whether a bill extending the provisions of reservation for the SCs and STs to the private sector could be enacted within the existing Constitutional framework.

“After careful consideration, it was concluded that it is not possible to provide for reservation in the private sector without amending the Constitution,” the final report submitted to the union cabinet argued, adding at the same time the amendment, however, would not effect the basic structure of the Constitution.

The expert panel also considered the option of enacting a law proving for reservation in the private section and incorporating it with the Ninth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. They found the proposition “unworkable” as it amounted to amending the Constitution.