After wooing women, Centre tries to attract minorities by offering government jobs

A DAY after announcing that the government would monitor recruitment of women in various ministries and departments, the Centre on Thursday reiterated its commitment of giving special consideration to minorities in recruitment in some select government departments. The Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities provides for giving special consideration to minorities in recruitment of police personnel, Central police forces, railways, nationalized banks and public sector enterprises, for which the composition of selection committees needs to be representative. The new initiative is based on an office memorandum issued on January, 2007, by the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT) which said that it should be mandatory to have one member belonging to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and one member belonging to minority community in selection boards or committees for making recruitment to 10 or more vacancies. It also called for wide publicity for all appointments in government, public sector enterprises and public sector banks and financial institutions. And, where there is concentration of minority community population in local areas, the vacancy circular in local language may be distributed in those areas by suitable arrangements. The guidelines issued by DoPT also include instructions for monitoring the progress in recruitment of minorities in all ministries or departments, public sector enterprises, public sector banks and financial institutions, a government release said. The number of persons belonging to the minority communities (for the five minority communities as a whole) recruited during the last three years in the various ministries/departments and their organisations are given below: 2006-07: 12,182 (70 Ministries/Departments/ organizations) 2007-08: 12,195 (61 Ministries/Departments/ organizations) 2008-09: 4,479 (32 Ministries/ Departments/ organizations)

Special recruitment drive for ST, SC, OBC A special recruitment drive has been launched in November, 2008 to fill up backlog vacancies of Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and other Backward Classes (OBC). According to government data based on information received up to July 3, 2009 from 11 ministries or departments, there were 207 backlog vacancies of SCs, 177 for STs, and 397 for OBC as on November 1, 2008. Action & Appointments Justice Rakesh Chandra Mishra, additional Judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court has been appointed as Judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office.