As per instructions issued by the department of personnel and training (DoPT), every ministry/ department and the organisations under it is required to designate an officer of the rank of deputy secretary, as liaison officer; to ensure that the appointing authorities comply with orders regarding the representation of scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) in government jobs.
Saddled with the responsibility to inspect rosters, call for records and convene meetings with concerned officers to ensure proper implementation of reservation instructions; these liaison officers have also been directed to identify backlog reserved vacancies and fill them up through special recruitment drives (SRD).
According to a parliamentary committee report of 2024, such data is being collected online from various ministries and departments.
However, DoPT has refused to provide data to RTI applicant Venkatesh Nayak, who sought the following information on 10 May 2024 relating to backlog reserved vacancies, under Section 6 of the RTI Act:
• Information about ministries/ departments that had not submitted their online data on SC/ST backlog vacancies to the DoPT.
• Copies of status reports or summaries prepared by the DoPT from this online data.
• Details of liaison officers appointed in ministries/ departments to oversee reservation matters and whether they belong to SC/ST communities.
Mr Nayak states that “While partial information on ministries and department who have not submitted their online data was eventually provided by another central public information officer (CPIO), the DoPT’s main CPIO outright denied queries of status reports and details of liaison officers appointed, claiming that the data was not maintained in a “compiled or consolidated form” and that collecting it from other departments would amount to “creation of fresh records,” which is not required under the RTI Act.’’
RTI applicant Nayak pointed out that the Report of the Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of SCs and STs, which was tabled in Parliament on 6 December 2024, has clearly recorded that from 1st January onwards, all the ministries/ departments have been requested to submit online data regarding backlog vacancies; and hence he, and in fact all citizens, have the right to know the details. He argues that the DoPT’s denial is “not only counterfactual but also false and misleading.”
The CPIO in his reply invoked Section 7(9) of the RTI Act, which exempts disclosures that would disproportionately divert the public authority’s resources. Mr Nayak argues that “Section 7(9) applies only to such information that is held by a public authority, not to such information which is not materially available with it. So, the two contentions of the CPIO are mutually contradictory.’’
Mr Nayak then filed another RTI application a few months later, that is in April 2025, and sought more specific information from the CPIO of DoPT as follows:
• The current number of backlog vacancies in Central government posts reserved for SC/ST/OBCs.
• The ministries or departments where these vacancies existed.
• Steps taken by DoPT to monitor, report, and ensure compliance with reservation norms, particularly in the case of carry-forward or backlog posts.
• Whether any data or annual returns had been submitted by ministries/ departments in this regard.
This time, the CPIO invoked Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act, claiming that the information was related to commercial confidence and competitive interest, and hence, exempt from disclosure. No clear reasoning was provided as to how public vacancy data could fall under such a clause.
Unsatisfied, Mr Nayak filed two first appeals, but the FAA, in a combined order dated 25 May 2025, upheld the CPIO’s stance, again citing the same exemption clause. The FAA failed to address the public interest override provision under Section 8(2) of the RTI Act, which states that information should be disclosed if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to protected interests, observes Mr Nayak.
Mr Nayak had also pointed out that the denial of information is grossly unfair as it is against the Supreme Court’s directions in the M Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh cases, where the Court emphasised data-backed implementation of reservation in promotions and appointments. Moreover, the CPIO and FAA have ruled against the observations of the parliamentary standing committees, which have repeatedly urged the timely filling of backlog vacancies to ensure equity in public employment.
Mr Nayak said that he had sought this information in the immense public interest, especially considering that Parliament’s standing committee on the welfare of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes had repeatedly flagged concerns about unfilled reserved posts and the lax implementation of the reservation policy across departments. He will further pursue the matter through the central information commission.
(Vinita Deshmukh is consulting editor of Moneylife. She is also the convener of the Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan. She is the recipient of prestigious awards like the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting, which she won twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Chameli Devi Jain Award for outstanding media person for her investigation series on Dow Chemicals. She co-authored the book "To The Last Bullet - The Inspiring Story of A Braveheart - Ashok Kamte" with Vinita Kamte and is the author of "The Mighty Fall".)
