Kerala Administrative Service (KAS) the premier civil service cadre shortly to be created by Kerala, and likely to take in the cream of government job seekers, may see a better than thought reservation package for certain backward communities.
Although community reservation is implemented in government service, as constitutionally guaranteed to members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC & ST) as well as Other Backward Communities (OBC), out of the three streams to which KAS was supposed to recruit officers, only one was specified to follow the usual reservation pattern, as per the draft procedures. Recent reports indicate however that Kerala government had a serious rethinking on this denial of reservation to take remedial measures eventually. Affected communities had highlighted the anomaly and brought it to the notice of the government for rectifying the mistake.
KAS consists of three streams: one third, by open selection for which selection would be made by State Public Service Commission (PSC) and the remaining two thirds would come from existing government employees, through an examination. The original draft of rules had provided for reservation to the latter cadre as well, but was removed in the revised draft later. Thus the posts of the two streams got into the category of promotion, and on the logic that those who get 'transferred' from existing government positions, cannot enjoy reservation again.
However, it would be a moot point at any given time whether all candidates from reservation communities who apply for KAS post would have enjoyed the benefit of reservation or not. Further, absence of reservation in this stream would deny the proportionate representation in civil service which the system of reservation is supposed to ensure, as envisaged by the Constitution.
Once the streams come under open selection mode, there will be age relaxation for eligible communities besides the set quota percentage for each community.
After the quota distortion was highlighted by a section of the media, and the SC/ST community leadership made representations to the government, it apparently woke up to the issue . However, it is learned that the case for OBC's was not adequately represented before the government, and therefore the planned corrective changes are not likely to straightaway cover communities such as Muslims and Ezhavas.