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Despite HC order, Rajnath finds way
for mass recruitment

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh has found a way out of the imbroglio arising out of a high court stay order against his large-scale recruitment drive, which was undertaken with the coming assembly elections in mind.

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court had on Wednesday directed the state government to hold back 40,000 clerical recruitments and adjust first the retrenched employees of a public undertaking that was recently wound up.

"We will honour the directive of the court, which has given us six months to absorb the employees of the State Mineral Development Corporation in a phased manner," a government spokesman said.

"We are prepared to give the court an undertaking on this," he told rediff.com

On this ground, the official was hopeful of getting vacated the interim stay order on the recruitment drive. The government had recently completed the selection process under the chief minister's revised reservation policy, allocating a separate quota for the most backward castes.

Since this was being done for the first time in the history of the state, Singh was hopeful of getting a lot of political mileage out of the recruitment exercise.

"After all, this would dispel all doubts about my commitment towards ensuring that the most backward castes get their due," he had said.

The newly listed 79 backward castes had been classified into three categories -- general backwards, most backwards and extreme backward castes.

Of these, Yadavs alone were kept in the first category, while eight castes formed the most backwards and the remaining 70 fell among extreme backwards.

The chief minister was often heard reiterating that the revision in the reservation policy was necessitated because "a small minority among the backwards were taking the lion's share in OBC reservations".

He was clearly hinting at the Yadavs, whose quota under the new arrangement had been limited to just 5 percent. This was done on the plea that it was "in accordance with their population among the backwards".

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