A circular was issued on 4 September by the Department of Expenditure, which comes under the Ministry of Finance, which had banned some non-developmental expenditures including the creation of new posts in ministries, departments, etc to "ensure availability of adequate resources for meeting the needs of critical priority schemes."
The Congress party claimed that the circular was stopping the creation of jobs in the government, however, the Centre has come out saying that decision does not curtail the process of hiring for government jobs.
"The Dept. of Expenditure circular dated 04 Sept 2020 deals with the internal procedure for creation of posts and does NOT in any way affect or curtail recruitment," the Ministry of Finance tweeted to clarify some points of the circular.
The statement also added that “There is no restriction or ban on filling up of posts in Govt of India. Normal recruitments through govt agencies like Staff Selection Commission, UPSC, Railway Recruitment Board, etc will continue as usual without any curbs.”
Earlier, Congress leader Rajeev Shukla reacted to the circular saying “This is a very alarming situation since country’s economy is already in doldrums. Our GDP has gone down – 23.9 per cent. International Labour Organisation (ILO) report suggests that 40 crore people are going to be below the poverty line.”
He also highlighted that the private sector was also in a bad situation and that the government was not doing much in terms of loan waivers, etc.
Rahul Gandhi had also criticised the circular.
“The Modi government’s thinking is minimum government, maximum privatisation. COVID is just an excuse, the government’s plan is to free government offices of all permanent staff, steal the youth’s future and propel his own friends forward,” he had tweeted.
India’s GDP has fallen to new lows in the second quarter of 2020 hitting minus 23.9 percent with the coronavirus forcing major industries to shut operations or size down on their hiring.
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