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The Central government directed the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Tuesday (August 20) to withdraw its advertisement issued three days ago, seeking applications for lateral recruitment to senior bureaucratic posts at the Centre.
Opposition party leaders, including Congress party President Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, had criticised the policy for not having reservations for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates.
Some of the NDA’s allies, such as the Janata Dal (United) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) also opposed the move. LJP leader Chirag Paswan called it “completely wrong” on Monday, and said he planned to raise the issue before the government.
A total of 45 posts were advertised with individuals having appropriate qualifications and experience from State/UT governments, PSUs, statutory organisations, research institutes and universities, and even the private sector eligible to apply. The advertisement mentions that all posts are “suitable for candidates belonging to the category of Persons with Benchmark Disability (PwBD).”
What exactly is the policy, how many people have been recruited as part of it, and why does it not have reservations? We explain.
In 2017, NITI Aayog, in its three-year Action Agenda, and the Sectoral Group of Secretaries (SGoS) on Governance in its report submitted in February, recommended the induction of personnel at middle and senior management levels in the central government. These ‘lateral entrants’ would be part of the central secretariat which, till then, had only career bureaucrats from the All India Services/ Central Civil Services. They would be given contracts of three years, extendable to a total term of five years.
Based on the above recommendation, the first vacancies for lateral entrants were advertised in 2018, but only for Joint Secretary level positions. Posts of the rank of Director and Deputy Secretary were opened later.
A Joint Secretary, appointed by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), has the third-highest rank (after Secretary and Additional Secretary) in a Department, and functions as the administrative head of a wing in the Department. Directors are one rank below Joint Secretaries, and Deputy Secretaries are one rank below Directors, although in most ministries, they perform the same job. While Director/Deputy Secretaries are considered middle-level officials in a department, the Joint Secretary-level is where the decision-making starts.
In 2019, Minister of State for the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) Jitendra Singh told the Rajya Sabha that “lateral recruitment is aimed at achieving the twin objectives of bringing in fresh talent as well as augment the availability of manpower”.
On August 8, 2024, while responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Singh said, “Keeping in view their specialized knowledge and expertise in the domain area, lateral recruitment at the level of Joint Secretary, Director and Deputy Secretary in Government of India, has been undertaken to appoint persons for specific assignments.”
Basically, the idea behind lateral recruitment is for the government to tap into individuals’ domain expertise and specialised know-how, regardless of whether they are career bureaucrats or not. In line with this
idea, officials ofvarious Central Civil Services have been given opportunities to serve in the Central Secretariat in the last decade, though it was always considered IAS-dominated.
The first round began in 2018 and attracted a total of 6,077 applications for Joint Secretary-level posts. After a selection process by the UPSC, nine individuals were recommended for appointment to nine different Ministries/Departments in 2019.
Another round of lateral recruitment was advertised in 2021, with two more rounds in May 2023. In total, as MoS Jitendra Singh told the Upper House on August 9 this year, “63 appointments have been made through lateral entry… in the last five years. Presently, 57 officers [lateral entrants] occupy positions in Ministries/ Departments.”
Lateral entries have been criticised on the grounds that there are no quotas for SC, ST and OBC candidates in such recruitment.
Reacting to the latest advertisement, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X that the lateral entries were a “part of a well-planned conspiracy” and that “the BJP is deliberately making such recruitments in jobs so that SC, ST, OBC categories can be kept away from reservation”.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Bihar Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav condemned the move as a “dirty joke”, saying that had the 45 advertised appointments been made through the civil services examination, “nearly half of the openings would be reserved for SC, ST, and OBC candidates”.
Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati said the policy deprives directly recruited employees working at lower-level posts, as they will not benefit from promotions. She also termed the lack of quotas a “direct violation of the Constitution”.
Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) leader and Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Aazad invoked the recent debates about creamy layer quotas for the SC community, for excluding some of its members from being eligible for reservations. “A question to the honourable judges and the central government who are forcibly looking for creamy layer in OBC/SC/ST: Where does the so-called creamy layer of these classes go when they are in these posts?”
SP leader Akhilesh Yadav said in a post, “The time has come to launch a nationwide movement against the conspiracy being hatched by the BJP to place its ideological allies in high government positions through the back door in UPSC. This method will close the doors for today’s officers as well as for the youth to reach higher positions in the present and future”. He termed it a “plan” to take away reservations from what he calls the PDA communities (Pichde, meaning backward classes or OBCs, Dalits, Alpasankhyak or minorities).
In a May 15, 2018 circular, the DoPT noted that “in respect of appointments to Central Government posts and services there shall be reservation for Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe/Other Backward Class candidates in temporary appointments which are to last for 45 days or more”. This was a reiteration — with OBCs added — of a circular issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs as far back as September 24, 1968. In effect, reservations have to be offered for any appointment in the bureaucracy.
However, on November 29, 2018, while the first round of lateral recruitment was being carried out, then DoPT Additional Secretary Sujata Chaturvedi wrote a letter to UPSC Secretary Rakesh Gupta, saying: “The candidates to be considered from the State Government, Public Sector, Autonomous Bodies, Statutory Bodies, Universities, would be taken on Deputation (Including Short Term Contract) with lien in the parent department. There are no instructions stipulating mandatory reservation for appointment on deputation”.
The letter further stated, “The present arrangement of filling up these posts may be deemed as a close approximation of deputation, where mandatory reservation for SC/ST/OBC is not necessary. However, if duly eligible SC/ST/OBC candidates are eligible, they should be considered and priority may be given to such candidates in similarly situated cases for ensuring holistic representation”.
Reservation in public jobs and universities is implemented via what is known as the “13-point roster”. According to this policy, a candidate’s position on a roster of openings is determined by dividing the quota percentage of their group (SC, ST, OBC, and now EWS) by a hundred.
For example, the OBC quota is 27%. Therefore, OBC candidates are recruited to every 4th post for which a vacancy arises in a department/cadre (100/27=3.7). Likewise, SC candidates, with 15% reservation, are supposed to fill every 7th vacancy (100/15=6.66), ST candidates, with 7.5% reservation, are supposed to fill every 14th vacancy (100/7.5=13.33), and EWS candidates, with 10% reservation, are supposed to fill every 10th vacancy (100/10=10).
According to this formula, however, there is no reservation for up to three vacancies. Files obtained from the DoPT by The Indian Express under the RTI Act state that “In a single post cadre, reservation does not apply. Since each post to be filled under this scheme [lateral entry] is a Single Post, reservation is not applicable”.
In the current round of recruitment, the UPSC has advertised 45 openings. If these were to be considered as a single group, according to the 13-point roster, six vacancies would be reserved for SC candidates, three for ST candidates, 12 for OBC candidates, and four for the EWS category. But since these vacancies have been advertised separately for each department, all of them are effectively single-post vacancies, and hence bypass the policy of reservations.
