The quiet halls of the Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (JKSSB) and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission (JKPSC) are currently the scene of a profound social tragedy. The young people of the Union Territory, and especially those from the General Category, are now presented with a calculated, data-driven despair instead of the dream of a government job, their primary social mobility engine for a long time in this region. Following the controversial reservation amendments of 2024, Jammu and Kashmir has developed a recruitment system where merit is a liability, and the “Open Merit” status has been transformed into a structural glass ceiling.

The Math of Despair

To realise the magnitude of this systematic exclusion, one must go beyond the political arguments and the cold numbers of recent recruitment advertisements. During the last eighteen months, which ended on December 31, 2025, a large number of notifications were issued by JKSSB, which can be considered as an empirical map of this displacement. A detailed study of the sixteen major notifications of JKSSB discloses an astonishing fact: only 4,136 out of the total 10,248 posts were earmarked for Open Merit (OM). This might seem approximately 40% in terms of figures; however, the “Open Merit” category in J&K is not a protected category, but rather a strained area where the General Category, which comprises around 60 to 70% of the population, is being forced into non-existence.

The largest recruitment drives of 2024 and 2025 illustrate this institutionalised shrinkage perfectly. In the July 2024 advertisement for 4,002 Police Constables, only 1,600 seats were available for Open Merit. This 40% share was then subjected to a secondary “horizontal” erosion. Under S.O. 288 and S.O. 339, 15% is earmarked for women, 6% for ex-servicemen, and further percentages for Special Police Officers (SPOs) and Volunteer Home Guards (VHGs). When these horizontal slices are carved out of the already thin OM slice, the “pure” competitive window for a non-category aspirant, the demographic majority of the Valley, dwindles to a dismal........

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