Contractual staff security Bill cleared amid Congress objections

The Haryana Assembly today passed the Haryana Contractual Employees (Security of Service) Bill, though Congress raised constitutional provisions on reservations being violated. The Bill allows contractual staff, engaged on a contract, ad-hoc or outsourced basis in the government organisation and those employed through Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam (HKRNL), to work till the age of superannuation.

Kaithal MLA moves amendments, rejected

Kaithal MLA Aditya Surjewala moved amendments related to the date of the applicability of the Bill, giving the status of a permanent employee after 10 years of service, and in case of death of the temporary employee, his or her family should get Rs 10 lakh compensation and job. These amendments were rejected

Attacking the Opposition, CM Nayab Singh Saini, in his reply to the Bill, said, “HKRNL came in 2022 and ended harassment of contractual employees by their ‘thekedaar’. In Congress’ time, employees used to get a salary of Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000 as contractors used to take a cut…We are correcting Congress’ wrong policies. We had promised 1.20 lakh employees of HKRNL that their services would be regularised.”

Those who are getting remuneration up to Rs 50,000 are eligible, but the CM told the House that those getting above Rs 50,000 would also be considered by a separate legislation.

Saini said, “It was claimed (by the Opposition) that there was no reservation under HKRNL. I would like to inform that 37,404 such employees were SCs (28%), 41,376 were from Backward Classes (32%) and 53,993 from General Category.” He read out Section 9 of the Deployment of Contractual Persons Policy, 2022, which said horizontal and vertical reservation would be followed for deployment by HKRNL.

He also justified the scoring parameters for the preparation of the merit list of candidates, where annual family income up to Rs 1.8 lakh would fetch 40 points. He said recruitment for 2 lakh permanent jobs would be held separately.

Before Saini, former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “HKRNL has no transparency. People are recruited on telephone call. It has to be seen what kind of jobs are provided and how much they are paid. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation says 54.7% of educated youth of Haryana have migrated to other states for jobs.”

Nuh MLA Aftab Ahmed suggested sending the Bill to the Select Committee of the House and said injustice was meted out to many who recently joined in contractual job recruitments. Rohtak MLA BB Batra said, “We may end up doing injustice with these contractual employees. I don’t think this Bill would stand the judicial scrutiny as reservation policy has not been followed.”