Haryana passes Bill providing 75 per cent reservation for locals in private sector jobs

Haryana Assembly on Thursday passed the Bill providing 75 per cent reservation in private jobs to people from the State. The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Bill, 2020 provides the quota for local people in private sector jobs that offer a salary of less than Rs 50,000 a month. Only 10 per cent of the recruitment by a company needs to be from the district in which it is located – the rest of the quota can be filled from other districts in the state.

The quota will initially apply for 10 years, according to the bill which now needs the assent of the state Governor to become law. The bill covers private companies, societies, trusts and partnership firms, among others, in the state. It provides for training to eligible local candidates when qualified people are not available. It defines local candidates as those domiciled in the state.

For the domicile status, a person should be born in Haryana or have lived there for at least 15 years. Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala introduced the bill in the House here on Thursday, when the assembly began the second part of its monsoon session.

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Giving 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs was a key poll promise by Chautala’s JJP, which is the BJP’s coalition partner in the state. But JJP legislator Ram Kumar Gautam criticised the move. He said the law will set a wrong precedent and other states will stop hiring youth from Haryana.

“If other states say they will not take Haryana youths, where will they go? Can you stop any person hailing from another state from working here? This is wrong,” he said.

Senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda objected to the option with companies to recruit only 10 per cent of their employees from one district.
This was not in the state’s interest, the opposition leaders told reporters. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the bill would go a long way in providing employment to local youth.

A statement on the objectives of the bill said the law will encourage all private employers in Haryana to boost local employment.

“The influx of a large number of migrants competing for low-paid jobs places a significant impact on local infrastructure and housing and leads to the proliferation of slums,” it said. It led to environment and health issues which are acutely felt in the state’s urban areas, affecting livelihood and the quality of life, the bill said.

“Therefore giving preference to local candidates in low-paid jobs is socially, economically and environmentally desirable and any such preference would be in the interest of the general public,” it said. Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala tweeted that the promise made to the state’s youth now stood fulfilled.

“Today our promise to lakhs of youth of Haryana has been fulfilled and now Haryanvi youth will have 75 per cent of jobs in the private sector,” he said. He said this moment, coming exactly a year after the BJP-JJP government came into being, is an emotional one for him. Chautala said any new factory or established factories advertising vacancies will now have to fulfil the quota.

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Earlier this year, the BJP-JJP government had failed to get Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya’s assent to an ordinance on the job quota. Narain had sent the ordinance to the President for his consideration. The state government had then said that it will table a job quota bill during the Vidhan Sabha’s monsoon session.

But amid fears of the coronavirus infection the House sat just for a day in August, only to resume the monsoon sitting now. When asked about the Governor’s move, Chautala had then said that since some provisions in the ordinance gave it "an overriding effect over other laws", Narain may have decided to refer the matter to the President.

(With inputs from PTI)

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