TIWN
New Delhi, Feb 19 : Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday strongly countered Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of ‘discrimination’ against the Other Backward Class (OBC) community in the country’s top bureaucratic set-up.
“Is he naive or a fool?,” Rijiju, lashing out at the Congress leader, took to his X handle and explained in detail the ‘progression process’ of bureaucrats. Rahul Gandhi, during his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in UP’s Amethi on Monday, told newsmen, ”The number of Dalits, Adivasis and other backward people remains very low in courts, same is the case in Bureaucracy.”
Taking strong exception to Rahul’s statement that only 3 out of 90 secretaries in Government of India belong to OBC community, Rijiju explained that the current batch of secretaries are from either 1992 or previous batches, when OBC reservation was not even in effect. “Today Rahul Gandhi again said there are only 3 OBC secretaries to Govt of India and negligible OBC judges. Is he naive or a fool? A fresh IAS officer can't just become secretary and a fresh lawyer can't become a judge of High Court or SC directly,” Rijiju said.
Minister of Earth Sciences further said that at that time, OBC was not even classified under reserved category, only SC and ST community got quotas in jobs. OBC classification into All India Service (AIS) came only post 1995 following the court verdict. Speaking light on the functioning of bureaucracy, he said, “Anyone who understands the service and the progression of the service knows how the batch system works in gaining seniority.”
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