Srinagar, Oct 28: Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Minister Javid Ahmad Dar on Wednesday said the government was working to address the demands of protesting agriculture graduates but maintained that changes to recruitment rules in the Agriculture Production Department could not be made overnight.
The minister said a senior officer had been deputed to hold talks with the protesters, who have been demonstrating for nearly a month, seeking changes to recruitment rules governing technical posts in the department.
“Their demand is that the recruitment rules in the Agriculture Department should be changed, whether at the JEO or AEO level. There are certain provisions in the recruitment rules that they feel are against their interests,” Dar told Kashmir Convener.
He said the government was discussing the demands with its colleagues and working towards streamlining the recruitment framework, while taking into account the functioning of the department and the interests of its existing workforce.
“This is not something that can be fixed overnight. Thousands of people work in our department, and they have their own compulsions. The department has to function,” he said.
Minister Dar said the government had been working for the past four months to reform the Agriculture Department, which, according to him, had faced stagnation, litigation and several issues related to recruitment rules.
“We have been trying to reform the Agriculture Department. There was a lot of stagnation and litigation, and several issues concerning recruitment rules,” he said, adding that steps had been taken to consolidate certain posts.
Appealing to the protesting graduates to call off their strike, the minister said the government had made efforts to engage with them and explain the issues involved.
The protest centres on recruitment policies that the graduates allege have restricted employment opportunities in the department for nearly two decades.
The protesters are demanding the scrapping of SRO-433 of 2004 and SRO-442 of 2017, claiming that the provisions have stalled direct recruitment to entry-level gazetted and non-gazetted technical posts in the Agriculture Production Department.
The government has yet to announce a final decision on the protesters’ demand for changes to the recruitment rules.
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