Quota in pvt sector: Govt calls meeting with industry chambers

New Delhi, November 7: Taking the issue of introducing reservation in the private sector through affirmative action forward, the Government has called for a meeting of chambers of commerce on November 15 to discuss and work out the roadmap for the future.

Confirming this, Secretary for Industrial Policy and Promotion in the Commerce Ministry Ajay Dua, who is also a member-secretary in the special inter-ministerial committee set up by the PMO to ensure time-bound examination of suggestions and action points received from various stakeholders, said he would be meeting members of CII, FICCI and ASSOCHAM to discuss how the action plan prepared by them is applicable to all of them.

All three chambers have already submitted their action plan for introducing reservation in their member companies to the Government.

In the discussion note circulated to the chambers, the Government wants to ascertain what is called a “code of conduct”, that is, whether some of the member companies are considering “a self-imposed code” or whether they have no code but are willing to accept a code that is put upon them and which is monitored by the chamber of commerce concerned. Added to this, there is also that class of corporates within the chambers that is non-committal to the issue.

According to the notice sent to the industry chambers, sources said the government had also requested them to ask their members to conduct an exercise to ascertain the caste profile of their existing employees and whether it was possible for them to “scale up” the affirmative action possible in their units.

The sources said based on these discussions (on November 15), a road map will be drawn on how to implement reservation in the private sector on a totally voluntary basis. These inputs will be taken up by the inter-ministerial group that is chaired by Principal Secretary in the PMO TKA Nair. The group is required to submit an interim report to the PM by April 16, 2007.