BJP seeks reservation for local candidates in NLC recruitment

CHENNAI: BJP state president K Annamalai has written to the Union Coal and Mines Minister to consider a standard reservation for local candidates who had foregone lands for the NLC’s development during the new recruitment if the ministry finds an absence of an adequate representation of locals.

Annamalai’s letter came in the wake of Chief Minister M K Stalin writing to the Prime Minister to direct the coal ministry to revisit the decision to adopt Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) scores for the recruitment of Graduate Executive Trainees (GET) in NLC.

“NLC had recently announced the recruitment of 300 GET. The contention here is that the pre-requisite for appearing in the examination is that the candidate should have cleared the GATE examination, ” Annamalai said, denying the Chief Minister’s claim that the GATE was made a prerequisite for appearing in the GET selection for the first time. “In the last decade, in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018, examinations for selecting GET had a prerequisite of GATE. However, we are informed that on-year advance notice was circulated about the intent for recruitment with this pre-requisite, thus allowing interested participants to prepare accordingly, ” BJP leader noted.

Annamalai said that in the absence of orders to NLC to make GATE compulsory for the recruitment of GET, consider revising the terms of the examination which is supposed to be held on May 14. Pointing to the NLC expansion, he said that the local villagers who have given away the land for the NLC were expecting “some leeway through jobs in the NLC”.

With no official data on the share of local employees in its overall employees' strength in NLC, the animosity amongst the locals has only grown stronger, he said, adding that during the new recruitments, the number of candidates from Tamil Nadu has been on a constant decline due to the competitive environment and increase in the cut-off. He urged the ministry to consider the reservation for local candidates if the ministry finds an adequate representation of locals after analysis.