English language newspaper published in Bengaluru and Doha

Bengaluru Office, NT: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has shelved the Employment of Local Candidates in Industries, Factories and Other Establishments in Karnataka Bill, 2024, following pressure from the Congress high command, it is learnt.

The party’s central leadership intervened after industry leaders expressed displeasure over the law, which mandates reservations for locals in the private sector. It creates a 50 percent quota for Kannadigas in management positions and 70 percent in the non-management sector.

The locals for whom jobs are reserved are those who possess a Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) with Kannada as a subject.

Instead, people who have been living in Karnataka for more than 15 years can take a language proficiency test from a central agency, which will show that they can read and write Kannada. Siddaramaiah’s cabinet approved the bill on Monday.

However, when the news became public, industry leaders including Manipal Global Education (MGE) Chairman Mohandas Pai and pharmaceutical giant Biocon CEO Kiran Mazumdar Shaw took to social media site X (formerly Twitter) to say it was a breach of their recruitment policies and added that there would be a scarcity of local talent.

There were concerns that there would be an exodus of companies from Bengaluru. To make matters worse, Andhra Pradesh’s Human Resources Development Minister Nara Lokesh went to X to invite an outraged National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) to relocate to the neighbouring state.

Only Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said his company would comply with “all regulations.”

Kharge says we have to do it safely

However, All India Congress Committee (AICC) president Mallikarjun Kharge had had enough and decided to intervene and convince the Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, to postpone the Local Government Quota Bill.

The reason behind the move was a possible exodus of tech companies to neighbouring Andhra. This is a U-turn as the Congress high command had sold the idea of ​​local quotas as poll promises for the Assembly elections in both Karnataka and Telangana.

Gandhi himself has moved on to more assertive forms of social justice measures such as reservations in the private sector, albeit for marginalised groups. However, he has had to give in to Kharge’s demand to block the local quota law in Karnataka.

Concerns were also raised about the legal viability of the law. Every state where such a law was passed was rejected. Recently, in November last year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court rejected the Haryana government’s bill mandating 75 percent reservation for local residents in the private sector in the state.