New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government is reportedly considering a proposal to do away a key recommendation of the Sachar Committee, to institute an equal opportunity commission to ensure diversity in public and private sector jobs. A report tabled in parliament last week, Telegraph reported, suggests that the Modi government thinks such a commission would be obsolete, given that the National Commission for Minorities already exists.
The Sachar Committee had been appointed by the Manmohan Singh government in 2005 and brought out its report in 2006. The report had said that even though the National Commission for Minorities was already in existence, another commission would be useful for handling the grievances of minority and marginalised communities.
During Singh’s second term, in 2013, a Bill was drafted on setting up an equal opportunities commission. The Bill was based on the report of an expert committee headed by N.R. Madhava Menon. In February 2014, months before the general elections, the Union cabinet approved the Bill. However, after the Modi government came to power later that year, the Bill was sent for inter-ministerial consultations.
Now, the 79th report of the Committee of Government Assurances of the Lok Sabha, which reviewed the pending assurances of the Union minority affairs ministry and tabled the report in Parliament on Thursday, seems to suggest that government has decided to do away with this idea.
“After detailed examinations in the ministry in its totality, the opinion of MoMA (ministry of minority affairs) is that the NCM can effectively take care of the functions as envisaged under EOC (equal opportunity commission). A proposal has therefore been sent to the Cabinet in this regard and the decision of the Cabinet is awaited,” said the report, according to Telegraph.
Both the Union finance and home ministries had opposed the proposal, the secretary of the minority affairs ministry told the assurance committee.
“Equal opportunities are required to be given to individuals and not groups as within the groups, there may be persons who are more advantaged or less advantaged, as most religious groups have poor, rich as well as very rich people,” the secretary reportedly said. “Therefore, instead of giving EOC to a group, it should be given to individuals. This was the opinion of MHA. The Ministry of Finance says that the NCM has already been constituted. Consent was not given to form a commission again because its mandate and the proposed mandate of the EOC were similar. Taking the views of both of them together, we again presented the Cabinet note on 18.02.2020. The proposal is still under consideration.”
Earlier too, in a July 2021 answer to a parliament question, then minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi seemed to suggest that the ministry and its departments are already fulfilling tasks that may have come under the equal opportunity commission.