In less than a year’s time, the State bureaucracy will see another round of churning, with the Supreme Court on Friday upholding Karnataka’s consequential seniority Act. This has cleared the decks for restoring the original level of seniority held by government employees belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities who had been demoted in 2018.
The decades-old legal battle over reservation in promotion came to an end with the apex court, which had rejected an earlier Act on the matter, upholding the Karnataka Extension of Consequential Seniority to Government Servants Promoted on the Basis of Reservation (To the Posts in the Civil Services of the State) Act, 2017.
Around 3,800 SC/ST employees had been demoted and about 5,000 general category employees promoted following a February 2017 Supreme Court order. Friday’s order will reverse a majority of these demotions and promotions. The earlier ruling had also impacted about 60,000 SC/ST employees indirectly as they lost their seniority. A significant number of general category employees could face demotions (back to the cadres they held prior to promotion), unless the government decides to rehabilitate them through measures such as creation of supernumerary posts outside the Act, sources said.