THE Standing Committee of the National Assembly on Law and Justice recommended the passage of law extending the job quota for the underdeveloped areas by the National Assembly. It considered the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2024 (Article 27), moved by MNA Aliya Kamran and after thorough discussions, recommended that the bill be passed by the National Assembly.
The quota system was introduced as a mechanism to ensure that every region of the country has a representation in institutions according to population. The policy was first introduced in 1948 for fifteen years but it was maintained in 1956, 1962 and after nationalization in the 1973 Constitutions. Apart from separate quotas for the provinces and Azad Kashmir, the system envisages further bifurcation of the quota of Sindh into urban and rural areas. There might have been justification for reservation of quota for all provinces in initial years and the Constitution also envisaged a timeframe which expired long ago. However, continuation of the policy after 77 years of independence is an admission of the fact that the state has miserably failed to bring backward areas at par with other parts of the country. It is something like a joke that out of a hundred vacancies only ten are filled on merit and the rest are assigned to those who might have been out of the race in a genuine competition. Quota system is also one of the causes of the deteriorating quality of the civil service, therefore, the policy needs to be reviewed thoroughly.
