Opposition fears recruitment ruse

Hyderabad, Dec. 9: There is more to the massive recruitment drive announced by the state government than meets the eye. Or so the opposition parties think. They see it as a clever ploy to persuade jobless educated youth and their families to vote for the Congress.

Though the Congress government has been announcing since it came to power that it would provide jobs to the youth, the mega effort has been taken up only in the last lap of its tenure. The opposition cannot be faulted for seeing a naked vote catching strategy behind it.

Whatever be the aim, it has stirred up new dreams among youth. It is expected that a staggering 50 lakh youth will line up for various recruitment exams till May 2009.

While 5 lakh candidates are expected to take DSC exam for over 54,000 teacher posts, another 5 lakh are expected to write the exam for 15,000 constable posts. For the Group-I, Group-II and Group-IV tests, around 23 lakh candidates are expected to appear.

Interestingly, all the recruitments are scheduled between December and May, which will coincide with the announcement of the election schedule, the campaign and the actual polling.

This also means that the recruitment drive will engross the minds of at least 50 lakh youth and will lure them away from election work for any party.

The Opposition leaders are worried that it will be difficult for them to mobilise youth to take part in election process in this context.

No wonder then that the Telugu Desam senior leader Nagam Janardhan Reddy described the DSC schedule as ‘election schedule’.

Interestingly, the government has put this ‘distraction’ before the youth while opposition parties are trying to attract them in right earnest. Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam swears by the youth. He has appointed his brother Pavan Kalyan as the chief of the youth wing of the party.

And the TD held a ‘Yuva Garjana’ to attract young voters and its president, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, has made umpteen promises to get their support.

But all this will come to naught if thousands of graduates from small towns and villages migrate to cities to take coaching for the exams. After all, they shout slogans only to get jobs. It will be wrong to expect them to give up the possibility of a job to shout slogans.