Lateral entry into bureaucracy is an attack on Dalits, OBCs and Adivasis — Rahul Gandhi

NEW DELHI — The Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, renewed his attack on the Modi government on Monday over the lateral entry scheme into the bureaucracy, which the Centre described as a well-thought-out move to fill in the gaps in ministries and departments requiring expertise and certain skill sets.

“Lateral entry is an attack on Dalits, OBCs and Adivasis,” Congress MP wrote on X, upping the ante on the ‘biggest’ lateral scheme under the Modi government.

“BJP’s distorted version of Ram Rajya seeks to destroy the Constitution and snatch reservations from Bahujans,” he added.

Congress party has been critical of the UPSC advertisement seeking recruitment of domain experts into bureaucracy and claimed that it was BJP’s conspiracy to deprive the unprivileged community of reaching top positions in government.

Yesterday, Rahul Gandhi dubbed the lateral entry scheme as ‘privatisation of IAS’ and also drew a SEBI link.

“Privatisation of the IAS is Modi’s guarantee for ending reservation,” he had said.

He claimed that the reservation of SC, ST and OBC categories was being openly snatched away by recruiting through lateral entry on important posts in various ministries of the central government.

Responding to the Congress and INDIA bloc’s criticism, the BJP has ‘unearthed’ a UPA link and accused the latter of politicising the issue to gain political mileage.

The BJP called out Congress ‘hypocrisy’ over the hiring of experts in bureaucracy and said that it was in 2005 under the UPA government that the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), under the chairmanship of Veerappa Moily, made these recommendations.

The war of words between Congress and BJP erupted over an advertisement by the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) on Saturday, which notified about the ‘vacancy’ for 45 domain experts in the rank and pay of Joint Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries and Directors. Out of 45, ten experts will be hired as Joint Secretaries, while the rest will be appointed to the ranks of Directors or Deputy Secretaries across various ministries.