Madhya Pradesh To Reserve All Government Jobs For Locals

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Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Tuesday,
“The state government has taken a crucial decision today.
Government employment in the state would only be open for people from the state.
We are putting in place the necessary legal framework for it.
The resources of Madhya Pradesh will only be for the residents of the state”
The government was preparing a single citizenship database so that people of the state do not have to register for each scheme
“We will put in place such a mechanism that will ensure employment to local youths on the basis of their mark-sheets of Class X and XII.”

Earlier attempts

Shivraj Singh Chouhan had earlier attempted to reserve employment in industries for locals but did not make any headway.
Importantly, just after being sworn in as CM in December 2018, Kamal Nath had announced making amendments in the state’s industrial policy to ensure that 70% of jobs are reserved for local youths.
That decision had triggered widespread protests by various parties, including the BJP and JD(U) in Bihar and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.

While domicile-based reservations have been implemented in education, courts have been reluctantto expand this to employment.
Although Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has not outlined details of the proposal, reservation solely based on place of birth would raise constitutional questions.
Article 16 of the Constitution, which guarantees equal treatment under law in matters of public employment, prohibits the state from discriminating on grounds
of place of birth or residence.
Article 16(2) states that “no citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect or, any employment or office under the State”.
However, Article 16(3) of the Constitution provides an exception by saying that Parliament may make a law “prescribing” a requirement of residence for jobs in a particular state.
This power vests solely in the Parliament, not state legislatures.

When the Constitution came into force, India turned itself into one nation from a geographical unit of individual principalities and the idea of the universality of Indian citizenship took root.
As India has common citizenship, which gives citizens the liberty to move around freely in any part of the country, the requirement of a place of birth or residence cannot be qualifications for granting public employment in any state.

The Supreme Court has ruled against reservation based on place of birth or residence.
In 1984, ruling in Dr Pradeep Jain v Union of India, the issue of legislation for “sons of the soil” was discussed.
The court expressed an opinion that such policies would be unconstitutional.
In a subsequent ruling in Sunanda Reddy v State of Andhra Pradesh (1995),
The Supreme Court affirmed the observation in Pradeep Jain to strike down a state government policy that gave 5% extra weightage to candidates who had studied with Telugu as the medium of instruction.
In 2002, the Supreme Court invalidated appointment of government teachers in Rajasthan in which-
The state selection board gave preference to “applicants belonging to the district or the rural areas of the district concerned”.
In 2019, the Allahabad High Court struck down a recruitment notification by the UP Subordinate Service Selection Commission which prescribed preference for women who are “original residents” of the UP alone.

Constitutionally, some states also have special protections under Article 371.
Andhra Pradesh under Section 371(d) has powers to have “direct recruitment of local cadre” in specified areas.
Some states have gone around the mandate of Article 16(2) by using language.
States that conduct official business in their regional languages prescribe knowledge of the language as a criterion.
This ensures that local citizens are preferred for jobs. For example, states including Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu require a language test.

Madhya Pradesh has never been at the centre of the insider and outsider debate unlike states like Maharashtra or Gujarat.
Chouhan’s major political announcement on Tuesday is being seen as a political masterstroke ahead of the 27 assembly by-polls,
Whose dates are yet to be finalized by the Election Commission of India.