Opposition cheers as Centre backpedals on UPSC lateral entry, but there is need for caution

Pushed into a corner by the Opposition and some of its own allies, the Centre on Tuesday (August 20) directed the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to withdraw its three-day-old advertisement calling for applications to laterally fill 45 vacancies in senior positions in the government.

The advertisement had triggered an uproar by the INDIA bloc, as well as BJP allies such as Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) of Union minister Chirag Paswan. These critics viewed the UPSC’s move as an assault against constitutionally-mandated reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Castes in public employment.

A curiously undated letter to UPSC chairperson Preeti Sudan from Union Minister of State for the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Jitendra Singh, urged the UPSC to “cancel the advertisement for lateral entry recruitment issued on 17.8.2024”. Shortly after the letter made headlines, the UPSC announced that the advertisement had been withdrawn “as requested by the requisitioning authority”.

Jubilant Opposition

The Opposition, as well as BJP’s alliance partners who had opposed the lateral entry recruitment, were predictably jubilant. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge claimed that the Centre had been forced to backpedal “due to the campaign of Rahul Gandhi, Congress, and INDIA parties” while cautioning people at large that “as long as BJP-RSS is in power, it will keep adopting new tactics to snatch away reservations”. Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, too, joined in asserting that his party would “foil conspiracies like the BJP’s ‘lateral entry’ at any cost.”

Similar claims of victory came from other INDIA bloc constituents too while BJP allies, LJP(RV) and JD(U) too welcomed the Centre’s “timely intervention” and “step in the right direction”.

Fourth step back by Centre

What would have certainly compounded the Opposition’s joy was also the fact that the moratorium on the latest round of lateral entry recruitment marked the fourth instance in a little over a month of the Centre being brought to heel — a rarity in the Modi government’s previous two terms.

Last week, the Centre discreetly withdrew the 2024 draft of its contentious Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill citing the need for wider consultation on a 2023 draft of the proposed legislation. Before that, amid protests by the Opposition and concerns by some of its allies, the Centre was forced to refer its Wakf (Amendment) Bill to a joint parliamentary committee for further scrutiny. And, a week earlier still, the Centre had to dilute its position on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budgetary proposal on long term capital gain (LTCG) indexation.

It is no wonder then that the Centre’s latest move to halt lateral entry recruitment in the bureaucracy has got an already buoyant and belligerent Opposition in celebratory mode; claiming that the strength of its robust numbers in the Lok Sabha had forced an otherwise arrogant regime to act more democratically and yield more frequently.

To be fair, the Opposition does have enough cause to rejoice. For the past decade, it had protested countless times, both inside and outside Parliament, against the Modi government’s arbitrary decisions and controversial legislations but with little success in forcing a volte face. Now, in a matter of weeks, the INDIA bloc had succeeded in doing so not once but four times.

Wily politics

Yet, the Opposition may want to tone down its triumphant waltz a notch, particularly on the lateral recruitment issue. For, while there is no denying that the Centre has been compelled to double back on a move it would have otherwise proceeded with had the BJP enjoyed a numerical strength in Parliament today similar to that of the previous two Lok Sabhas, it is also a fact that this latest U-turn bears the hallmark of wily politics.

There are three important references in Jitendra Singh’s letter to the UPSC chairperson that the Opposition, particularly the Congress, would ill-afford to overlook or underplay.

First, Singh’s letter makes a crafty mention of lateral entry being “endorsed by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, which was constituted in 2005, chaired by Shri Veerappa Moily”. It further states that “there have been many high-profile cases of lateral entrants” and goes on to list “posts as important as that of Secretary in various ministries, leadership of UIDAI, etc have been given to lateral entrants without following any process of reservations... it is well known that the members of the infamous National Advisory Council used to run a super-bureaucracy that controlled the Prime Minister’s Office”.

Second, Singh underscores that Modi “is of the firm belief that the process of lateral entry must be aligned with the principles of equity and social justice... particularly concerning the provisions of reservation”.

Intention of revival?

Lastly, the minister says that though there has been no provision for reservation in lateral entry recruitment thus far, “this aspect needs to be reviewed and reformed” in the context of Modi’s “focus on ensuring social justice”.

This last reference is, arguably, the most consequential given that it hints at the Centre’s intention of reviving lateral entry recruitment at a future date by redressing current concerns over such appointments being out of the affirmative action net.

The question, thus, is not about if but of when the government would go ahead with such a reform and the mechanism it would draw up for ensuring SC, ST and OBC reservation in lateral recruitment. If the government succeeds with this “review and reform” plan, the previous two references would, expectedly, become pivots of the BJP’s political tirade against the Opposition, especially the Congress.

Inherited legacy

Whether the Opposition agrees or not being inconsequential, Singh’s letter makes it clear, as other BJP leaders did over the past three days, that lateral entry in recruitment wasn’t a BJP or Modi brainchild but a legacy inherited from previous Congress and Congress-led coalition governments (of which several current INDIA bloc constituents and lateral entry critics were an important part).

The BJP’s counter-argument would, naturally, be that the INDIA bloc was being hypocritical on the matter as its parties had not pressed for reservations when the likes of Nandan Nilekani (the first UIDAI chief), Montek Singh Ahluwalia (former Planning Commission deputy chairman), Raghuram Rajan (former RBI Governor), Kaushik Basu (former chief economic advisor to the UPA-II government) or even Dr Manmohan Singh (who served as a lateral bureaucratic entrant across various ministries, the Planning Commission and the RBI before making his political debut as India’s finance minister in 1991) were recruited laterally into the government.

More so, a cursory glance at these luminaries, notwithstanding their meritorious record in the positions they held, would show that none of them belonged to the SC, ST or OBC communities, whose rights under affirmative action the Opposition today claims are being trampled with due to lateral recruitment.

BJP’s way of hitting back

That Modi now wants the process of lateral entry to be “aligned with the principles of equity and social justice” is expected to be the BJP’s way of hitting back at the Congress and the wider Opposition by asserting the all-too-familiar claim the Prime Minister was correcting the wrongs of previous Congress and Congress-led coalition regimes.

As such, by withdrawing the current round of lateral entry recruitment the BJP may seem a tad bruised, no less ahead of the crucial assembly polls in J&K (a UT where the BJP can be credited with introducing SC-ST reservations in the Assembly), Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Yet, the BJP’s step back may also pave the way for a leap forward. The Opposition may want to hold on to uncorking that bubbly just yet or its current excitement may soon turn into embarrassment.