P&H High Court To Hear Challenge To Haryana's 75% Job Reservation For Locals Law On March 3, Centre Asked To File Reply

The Punjab and Haryana High Court will hear a challenge to the Haryana law (The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act 2020) which provides 75% reservation for local people in private sector jobs having a monthly salary of less than Rs 30,000, on March 3.The Bench of Justice Ajay Tewari and Justice Pankaj Jain has also asked the Central Government to file its response to the bunch of please challenging the law.It may be noted the Supreme Court last week set aside the interim order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which stayed the operation of the Haryana law. On February 3, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had granted a stay on the operation of the Act.Noting that the High Court had not recorded any reasons for its stay order, the Supreme Court on February 17 set it aside and requested the High Court to finally decide the matter within four weeks. The Supreme Court further ordered that there should be no coercive steps against employers under the Act in the meantime and directed that the parties should not seek adjournments.In the above terms, a bench comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao and PS Narasimha disposed of the special leave petition filed by the State of Haryana against the High Court's order."...we do not intend to deal with the merits of the matter as we propose to request the High Court to decide the writ petitions as expeditiously as possible, at any rate within 4 weeks. The parties are directed to seek no adjournments and present before the court next week for fixing the schedule of the hearing.In the meanwhile, the State of Haryana is directed not to take any coercive steps against the employers. The impugned order dated 03.02.2022 is set aside as the HC has not given sufficient reasons for staying", the bench dictated in the open court.The background of the matterThe High Court is dealing with a bunch of pleas moved by the Faridabad Industries Association (FIA) and others challenging the law. Admitting the plea, the Court had earlier issued a notice to the state governmentIt may be noted that the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act 2020, which was notified on November 6, 2021, seeks to provide 75 percent reservation for local candidates in private sector jobs that offer a salary of less than Rs 30,000 a month. The Act is scheduled to come into effect on January 15, 2022.The Law applies to all Companies, Societies, Trusts, Limited Liability Partnership Firms, Partnership Firms, and any person employing ten or more persons, but excludes the Central Government or the State Government, or any organization owned by them.The plea before the CourtThe petition has been filed by FIA, a premier industries association of North India, formed in 1952 by a group of enterprising industrialists. It challenges the Act for being unconstitutional and violating Articles 14, 15, and 19 of the Constitution of India. The petition also seeks a stay on the implementation of the Act until it is finally decided.The plea claims that the Act is unconstitutional on account of being excessively vague, arbitrary, and inter alia granting overly broad discretion to the Authorised Officers appointed therein, and as such provides an independent ground for striking down the Act as unconstitutional.Averring that the Act is applicable to all diverse nature of employment, is not based upon intelligible differentia and rational classification and hence, is ultra vires, the plea further adds thus:"The Act purports to effectively provide for reservation in private employment and represents an unprecedented intrusion by the government into the fundamental rights of private employers to carry out their business and trade, as provided under Article 19 and the restrictions being places upon such a right are not reasonable but are arbitrary, capricious, excessive and uncalled for."Importantly, the plea argues that the Law fails to take into account practical commercial concerns and avers that the domicile criteria provided in the Act goes on to violate the mandate of Article 16 (2) of the Constitution which provides that no citizen shall be ineligible for or discriminated against in respect of employment on the ground only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them.In addition to the above, the plea states that the Act is contrary to the very idea of common citizenship for the Union of India and that it fails to uphold the federal structure of the Union of India which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India.Senior Advocate Akshay Bhan appeared for FIA along with Advocates Jeetender Gupta, Surbhi Sharma, Tushar Sharma, Vishal Sharma appeared for the petitioners

P&H High Court To Hear Challenge To Haryana's 75% Job Reservation For Locals Law On March 3, Centre Asked To File Reply

Sparsh Upadhyay

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