RANCHI: The Jharkhand Congress has decided to press for 27% reservation of government jobs for OBCs and a delegation of party MLAs will submit a detailed memorandum, along with a charter of their demands, to chief minister Hemant Soren in a week.
A resolution to this effect was taken during a meeting of the legislative party members, which was attended by 17 MLAs, at the Rock Garden on Thursday.
The meeting was chaired by Pakur MLA and leader of legislative party Alamgir Alam, who is also a minister in the Hemant’s cabinet.
Talking to TOI after the meeting, Alamgir said that besides discussing the state government’s management of the pandemic, they reviewed the status of their manifesto prepared during the 2019 assembly election.
He added, “We discussed four key points mainly – 27% reservation for OBCs in government jobs, formation of employment rules and policy (niyojan neeti), jobs and fulfilling long-pending demands of pay hike by para-teachers.
All these factors were, in fact, part of our manifesto during the 2019 assembly election and the party will pursue them afresh with the government.” Besides Alam, three other Congress MLAs are part of the 12-member cabinet, though one berth is vacant at the moment and education minister Jagarnath Mahto is yet to be reallocated his portfolio post his recovery from Covid.
Even though the mahagathbandhan government of JMM-Congress-RJD had promised to provide 1 lakh jobs per year soon after it came to power in 2019, it has failed to do so.
Since last week, a campaign against the state government for failing to provide jobs is trending on social media platform.
Alam said that despite facing hurdles, the state government is working hard to fulfil its promises.
While the pandemic has halted everything, the state government is exploring various ways to create livelihoods,” he said, adding that being an alliance partner in the government, Congress will pursue all promises made in the manifesto in the interest of the people.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s meeting was attended by the four ‘disgruntled MLAs ’ —Irfan Ansari (Jamtara), Mamta Kumar (Ramgarh), Umashankar Akela (Barhi) and Rajesh Kachchap (Khijri) — who had rushed to Delhi on Tuesday to meet the central leadership to air their unhappiness with the party affairs.
Mahagama MLA Deepika Pandey Singh didn’t attend the meeting as she went to Uttarakhand for a two-day trip.
Deepika is Congress’s national secretary and has been appointed as in-charge of Uttarakhand.