Why in news:

• Now, non-Haryana domicile candidates who meet the state-prescribed socio-economic criteria will also get the benefit of 20 additional marks during the selection process for government jobs, according to an amended Haryana government notification.

Key Points:

• In this regard, the Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL) undersecretary, has submitted an affidavit before the Punjab and Haryana high court in response to a pending petition.
• The state government’s affidavit reads that the weightage for socio-economic criteria and experience will also be extended to the non-Haryana-domicile candidates in terms of the chief secretary’s amended notification, and this translates to extra marks.
• The government has also submitted that, it had also issued a corrigendum calling upon the non-Haryana-domicile candidates eligible for these marks to apply for the posts of assistant engineer in the Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited. The affidavit was in response to an aspirant’s petition for directions to quash the advertisement  for these jobs. The rules kept 20 marks out of 100 for the “socio-economic criteria and experience”, making these dependent on state domicile among other things.
• The petitioner had opposed these additional marks as another form of reservation and had claimed that this preferential treatment will create a class based on family background with no rational link to the desired objective, and by that argument, it was “unconstitutional”.
• Notably, in response, the high court agreed prima facie with the petitioner, holding that “Confining of the benefit of socio-economic criteria and awarding 20 extra marks based on descent or domicile is violative of Article 16(2) of the Constitution, and hence unconstitutional.