The committee of all political parties on Wednesday said the need to constitute an expert committee to review the state’s job reservation policy will be one of its suggestions to be submitted to the state government. Also, the re-constituted committee led by chairperson Dr Ampareen Lyngdoh has directed all political parties to come up with written suggestions with justification on the issue of job reservation policy within 15 days.
Talking to reporters in Shillong, Chairperson of the committee, Dr Ampareen Lyngdoh said one of the suggestions of this committee includes the formation of an expert committee comprising of experts from legal, economic, constitutional and other backgrounds.
“There is one thought which says form a committee of experts, legal background, constitutional background, and then economical background, somebody from economics department that will look at data that will look at evaluation of population, so there was a mixed suggestion here,” Dr. Lyngdoh said.
Stating that the committee wants all the political parties on board over this job reservation issue, she said, “We have communicated accordingly to all the political parties kindly please go back to your respective political parties with those discussions and we hope that these discussions then result positively so that we have political parties on board.”
Further, the chairperson has also requested all political parties to submit their written suggestions with justification to their verbal suggestions on the matter within a period of 15 days.
“We have requested all political parties also to prepare their suggestions, omissions, cancellations, deletions with substantial legal footing as we can always suggest whatever we want but we need to also make sure that we clear the legal scrutiny as the state political parties are mandated to review with condition that there will be no obstruction or scrutiny that will result negatively for the government,” the Chairperson said.
She added, “The second thing is you may come with a drop menu and say we want this, this done but you also have to give justification so that government if at all it considers any of your suggestions or for that matter that expert committee should it be an independent committee or should it not be an independent committee we don’t know but you at least have to justify and each political parties will be responded to individually and then we can have a common discussion again.”
Maintaining that there are divergent views on their opinions of that reservation policy, she said, the committee at this level is not competent to discuss those matters.
Lyngdoh said that different political parties have their different opinions on the issue of the job reservation policy.
“Some have asked for status quo, some have said review on these, these points but all those presentations were made verbally. Now, we cannot make a verbal presentation in front of the committee and expect the committee to understand what you mean by that,” she said.
The chairperson also informed that the two political parties, who did not participate in the first meeting of the committee and were not privy to the discussion on the roster system, will be again meeting with the officers to satisfy their understanding of a proposed roster system.
Meanwhile, the committee is proposing to meet again after three weeks.