By TwoCircles.net News Desk,
New Delhi: According to government data provided to the Rajya Sabha today, there has been sharp decline in recruitment of people from minority communities in the central government services including ministries and departements. In 2006-07, more than 12 thousand people from these communities were recruited while in 2008-09 only 4,479 could be recruited. However, it is not clear how many Muslims are among these recruits as the government did not want to disclose it.
Minister of Minority Affairs Salman Khursheed told Rajya Sabha today that government has no data about individual minority community regarding their recruitments in central government services.
“Statistics of employment of Minority community persons, including Muslims, in the Central Government Services is not maintained on the basis of a particular religion but for all the five minority communities as a whole,” he said in a written reply.
“The guidelines issued by Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT) on 8th January, 2007 include instructions for monitoring the progress in recruitment of minorities in all Ministries/ Departments, public sector enterprises, public sector banks and financial institutions. The data is not collected minority community-wise or service-wise by the DOPT, but for the five minority communities as a whole.”
He presented data regarding recruitments of minorities in the central government in the last three years. The recruitments of 12182 minority persons in 2006-07 were made in 70 ministries/departments the recruitment of 4,479 in 2008-09 is against vacancies in 32 ministries/departements.
The number of persons belonging to the minority communities recruited during the last three years in the various Ministries/departments and their organisations are given below.
| 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09 |
| Minorities recruited in respect of 70 Ministries/Departments | Minorities recruited in respect of 61 Ministries/Departments | Minorities recruited in respect of 32 Ministries/Departments |
| 12,182 | 12,195 | 4,479 |
Highlighting the importance of the Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities Khurshid said: The program provides for giving special consideration to minority communities in recruitment of police personnel, Central police forces, railways, nationalized banks and public sector enterprises and for this purpose, the composition of selection committees should be representative.
To implement the provision, the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT) has issued Office Memorandum on 8th January, 2007. The salient features of this Office Memorandum are as follows:-
(i) The composition of Selection Committees should be representative. It should be mandatory to have one member belonging to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and one member belong to minority community in Selection Boards/Committees for making recruitment to 10 or more vacancies.
(ii) Where the number of vacancies against which selection is to be made is less than 10, efforts should be made to have the Scheduled Caste/Tribe officer and a Minority community officer included in such Committees/Boards.
(iii) Wide publicity should be given to all appointments in Government, public sector enterprises and public sector banks and financial institutions. Advertisements should be issued in the language(s) spoken by a large number of people of the State/UTs, apart from English and Hindi. Further, for Group C and D level posts, having only basic qualifying requirements, information about vacancies for recruitment should also be disseminated through schools and colleges in that area, in addition to normal channels.
(iv) 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.
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