Enraged over the new criteria laid down by the UT government for filling up of 8575 class-IV posts debarring the highly qualified youth from participating in the selection process, a large number of youth led by Mr. Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman-JKNPP & former Minister held a protest demonstration at Jammu today. The protestors torched the effigy of the government and raised slogans of “Pade likhe yuvaon ke saath insaaf karo, insaaf karo”, “Ek lakh naukrian ko advertize karo, advertize karo”, “10+2 se zyada pade yuvaon ke liye posts nikalo” etc.
Speaking to media persons, Mr. Harsh Dev accused the BJP government of betraying the educated unemployed youth in the name of jobs. He said that all tall promises of BJP leaders on youth empowerment and gainful employment for all had proved a hoax with the unemployment rate increasing day after day. While the unemployment market was flooded with ever increasing number of graduates, post-graduates, PhDs and professionally trained youth, the government had failed to create adequate avenues for their absorption.
Pointing towards the repeated announcements by the BJP government of job bonanzas post Article 370 abrogation, Mr. Singh lamented that the actual delivery was in inverse proportion to the articulation of promises itself. Rather them providing jobs to youth, the government had retrenched/disengaged thousands of youth working in various government departments during the past one year. While the fast track recruitment of 50,000 vacancies announced after State’s Reorganization on 5th August, 2019 had proved to be another ‘Jumla’, the GoI’s announcement in Parliament during 2020 Budget Session in February of having created another 50,000 new posts also seemed to a mere hyperbole.
Calling upon the government to advertize all the one lac posts for filling up as per its repeated claims, Mr. Singh said that any delay in the matter could prove counter-productive, rather disastrous. He added that not only should the highly qualified youth be allowed to participate in Class-IV selections but also in the selections for Panchayat Assistant posts where also a ceiling of 50% marks had been prescribed by the government in the most clandestine manner by overlooking the aspirations of these educated youth. He said youth organizations and student bodies would continue to get the support of Panthers in all their endeavours for justice and equity.
Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion included Surinder Chouhan, Sunny Chib, Gurdeep Singh@Raju, Amit Dutta, Yasir Shah, Arun, Avinash Jamwal, Kartik Bhagat, Abdul Aziz, Vikas, Sachin Kumar, Devinder, Harmit Singh, Sarlsdeep Singh, Daleep Singh, Sachin Singh besides others.