The Maharashtra state administration has filled up over 1 lakh (100,000) vacant posts in the reserved category in this calendar year so far.
Another 78, 000 posts are scheduled to be filled up before December 31, 2003.
A state government directive of October 7, 2003, has ordered strict adherence to this schedule by all department heads who would face disciplinary action if their respective reserved category backlog is not cleared by the end of the current calendar year.
The new recruits (an average monthly expenditure of Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) per employee to the state government) would place an additional burden of Rs 60 crore (Rs 600 million) every month for the state government.
The Maharashtra government had for the last two years frozen fresh recruitments which according to state government officials has reduced its salary-related expenditure (as a percentage of its revenue receipts by 20 per cent).
The revenue receipts for the last fiscal were pegged at Rs 34,182 crore (Rs 341.82 billion). The revenue receipts were said to be growing annually at 11 per cent.
As a result of the freeze on recruitments (open category) for the last two years several posts in the state government administration had also lapsed (a phenomenon that follows the post in the open category lying vacant for more than six months).
However, this stipulation does not apply to the reserved category and the posts lying vacant for several years had increased to over 1.80 lakh (180,000).
One of the first steps taken by chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde after he took over as the chief of the state administration was to order the filling up of all posts in the reserved category.
While, the original stipulation had directed all state government departments to fill up these reserved posts by September 30, 2003, an extension has been given to the earlier deadline up to December 31, 2003, since up to March 31, 2003, only 79, 000 posts were filled up.
The posts have to be filled up through the Maharashtra Public Service Commission and the state employment exchange.
A bulk of the vacancies filled up already is in the co-operatives, education and medical departments.
The state government has to guard against bogus caste certificates being used by prospective employees in the wake of scores of existing reserved category state government employees having been found to have worked for several years in the state administration on the strength of such fraudulent papers.
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