BENGALURU: Set back to the Congress party ahead of the state election in Karnataka, the Supreme Court has ordered the demotion of 20,000 employees belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes categories in the state.
With the assembly elections round the corner, the implementation of the Supreme Court order will lead to a major reshuffle in the state government departments.
Karnataka has reservations in promotions since 1978 – but the apex court scrapped it negatively affecting nearly 20,000 people belonging to SC/ST category across 63 state government departments meanwhile equal number of people from the backward and general categories will be promoted.
The Supreme Court ruled in BK Pavithra’s favour, a government engineer working in the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA). Pavithra had challenged the consequential seniority in promotions awarded to SC/ST.
The court in a judgement in February 9, 2017, struck down the Act and ordered the Siddaramaiah’s government to stop caste based reservation for government posts.
To comply with the order passed by Supreme Court, Chief Secretary Ratna Prabha had asked all departments to complete the process of notifying the demotions and the subsequent promotions, reported The News Minute.