Roster point fixation for reserved categories delaying issuing of job notifications

Hyderabad: The process of fixation of roster points for various reserved categories is delaying the issuance of government job notifications in the state.

Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao had announced in the assembly a week ago that notifications to fill over 80,039 government posts will be issued with immediate effect. However, none of the job notifications could be issued so far.

Officials are clueless on where to begin the reservation roster points to notified vacancies in various reserved categories for old and new districts.

Chief secretary Somesh Kumar held a meeting with officials at the Secretariat a day ago to discuss and resolve this matter. The finance department has to first issue GOs notifying vacancies and refer these to TSPSC to fill the vacancies.

The TSPSC has to issue job notifications duly following roster points.

The government extends 15 per cent quota for Scheduled Castes, 6 per cent for Scheduled Tribes and 29 per cent for Backward Classes. The remaining 50 per cent posts will be filled under OC quota (open competition).

These apart, 'horizontal reservations' for women (33 per cent), the physically challenged (3 per cent), ex-servicemen (2 per cent), meritorious sportspersons (1 per cent) are being extended.

Recently, the government has decided to implement a 10 per cent quota for EWS (economically weaker sections), which too will be 'horizontal reservations'.

Reservations for SCs, STs, and BCs are referred to as vertical reservation.

Horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries such as women, veterans, the
transgender community, and individuals with disabilities, cutting through the vertical categories.

For every 100 vacancies in each department, the government has to indicate a roster point from 1 to 100, indicating which number post is reserved for whom such as OC, BC, SC, ST, women, ex-servicemen, sportspersons and EWS among these categories.

The next recruitment should begin from the roster point where it ended in previous recruitment. At present, the old ten districts in Telangana have roster points.

The government has reorganised 10 old districts into 33 districts in 2016. With this, there is confusion among officials over where to begin roster points in old and new districts.

There is no clarity on whether or not to continue old roster points for old districts and scrap all previous roster points and give new roster points to all the 33 districts.

There are doubts that scrapping of previous roster points may invite legal trouble if notifications are released based on this. Officials are taking legal opinion on how to proceed further and how to avoid legal troubles in future if someone files cases in courts on job notifications challenging new roster points.