Ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, the state cabinet announced the implementation of a policy promoting domicile teacher recruitment. The policy essentially reserves approximately 85% of government teaching posts for the natives of Bihar.
This announcement follows Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s remarks on Monday, where he claimed that the policy would be applied to the recruitment process for school teachers.
“The proposal for giving preference to native residents of the state in teachers’ recruitment exams was cleared,” Additional Chief Secretary (Cabinet Secretariat) S Siddharth told the press following the state cabinet meeting held on Tuesday.
How are the reservation quotas distributed?
Siddharth further stated that more than 50% of seats had already been reserved for residents of the state under different quotas.
He explained that this form of reservation came from the quotas prescribed for individuals belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backwards Classes (OBCs), Extremely Backwards Classes (EBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), which cumulatively represented approximately 60% of the available teaching positions.
The additional chief secretary to the Bihar cabinet further highlighted that, as per the government’s decision, only residents of the state will be able to avail of the 35% reservation quota for women.
“Of the remaining seats, 40 per cent shall now be reserved for native residents of Bihar, who completed their class 10 and class 12 in the state. So the quota for native residents effectively will be more than 85 per cent,” he added.
Opposition parties also get behind the domicile issue ahead of elections
In the weeks leading up to the Assembly polls, there have been growing efforts by multiple political parties to rally public support around the issue of domicile in the state. Both the Leader of Opposition, Tejashwi Yadav, and Union minister Chirag Paswan have voiced their support for a domicile policy. Tejashwi Yadav, representing the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), recently announced his intention to implement a “100 per cent domicile” policy should his party form the next government. Assembly elections in Bihar are expected to be held in November this year.