Maharashtra govt’s new promotion rule is another barrier for SC professionals, mockery of law |
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Maharashtra govt’s new promotion rule is another barrier for SC professionals, mockery of law
When a Dalit officer earns a promotion through superior performance, administrative interventions step in to preserve the unreserved slot for potentially less-qualified candidates from privileged backgrounds.
In the high corridors of Mantralaya in Mumbai, Maharashtra, a quiet yet profound shift is altering the landscape of public administration. The recent General Administration Department notification has brought a long-standing debate over the term “unreserved” to a critical tipping point.
While public discourse usually centres on entry-level quotas, a pivotal cabinet decision has quietly reshaped the rules of professional advancement. This policy establishes an invisible but rigid barrier for the marginalised intelligentsia, particularly Scheduled Caste (SC) professionals.
By systematically blocking meritorious SC candidates from securing “Unreserved” (UR) vacancies in promotions, the administration is shifting the goalposts of constitutional governance, making a mockery of the duality of due process of law and procedure established by the law.
The distortion of the open arena
Constitutional jurisprudence, especially as noted in HM Seervai’s Constitutional Law of India: A Critical Commentary, establishes that the unreserved category is an open field, not a caste quota. In the political philosopher John Rawls’s treatise A Theory of Justice, it is stated that institutional spaces must offer a genuine level playing field through “fair equality of opportunity.” The Supreme Court of India reinforced this through the merit-migration doctrine in a line of landmark judgments, including Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), Saurav Yadav v. State........