Hakeem Yaseen slams Medical Officer reservation policy

Srinagar, Dec 26: Peoples Democratic Front (PDF) leader and former Minister Hakeem Mohammed Yaseen has criticised the Jammu and Kashmir Health and Medical Education Department for what he termed as a “deeply flawed and unjust” allocation of Medical Officer (MO) posts, where only 192 out of 480 posts have been kept for Open Merit (OM) candidates.

In a statement issued here, Hakeem Mohammed Yaseen said that the present reservation structure has completely distorted the original objective of affirmative action.

“Reservation was introduced to uplift the genuinely disadvantaged, not to overpower merit or convert equality into exclusion. Today, Open Merit candidates—despite being the backbone of competitive examinations—are being pushed to the wall,” he said. The former Minister expressed serious concern over the reservation breakup, under which a majority of posts have been allocated to various reserved categories, leaving Open Merit with barely 40 per cent of the total vacancies. “This is creating a new injustice while claiming to correct an old one. Such imbalance is neither constitutional nor socially sustainable,” Yaseen asserted.