Dhaka Bureau: Today, Thursday, July 4, the students again started protesting against quotas in government jobs. DU students are protesting by blocking Shahbagh for the third consecutive day, demanding reinstatement of the quota cancellation notification. As a result, a severe traffic jam has occurred in that area.
On Wednesday (July 3) at 2:30 p.m., the protesting students of all the halls of Dhaka University gathered at the central library of Dhaka University under the banner of the ‘anti-discrimination student movement’. Students of all institutions in the capital, including Dhaka University, participated in this movement. After that, the students came to Shahbagh via Doel Chatwar, High Court Square, and Matsabhavan and circled the Dhaka University campus with a procession. The agitating students stayed there for about one and a half hours from quarter past four.
At this time, the quota of students is not merit merit; Let the quota system be abolished, and let the talented be freed. In my golden Bengal, there is no room for discrimination. Compromise, not struggle; struggle, struggle; High Court or Rajpath, Rajpath Rajpath; Shahbag intersection of the capital became hot with slogans such as Dalali Na Rajpath, Rajpath Rajpath, etc. As a result of the students’ blockade, all traffic in Shahbagh came to a standstill. At 5:30 PM, the students left the Shahbag blockade and came in front of the Raju sculpture, ending the protest rally.
The students protesting at Shahbagh mentioned four points of demand. The demands are: Abolish the quota system in government jobs announced in 2018 and uphold the merit-based recruitment circular; Subject to the 2018 Circular, setting up a commission to expeditiously eliminate unreasonable and discriminatory quotas in government jobs (all grades) and consider only backward and disadvantaged groups as per the Constitution; The quota facility cannot be used more than once in the recruitment examination of government jobs, and in cases of the non-availability of qualified candidates in the quota, recruitment to vacant posts is done on a merit basis, taking effective measures to ensure a corruption-free, impartial, and merit-based bureaucracy.
Till 2018, a 56 percent quota was prevalent in government jobs in Bangladesh. However, that year, there was a massive anti-quota movement in various educational institutions, including Dhaka University. In view of this, the government completely canceled the quota system for jobs from ninth to thirteenth grade. Earlier, 30 percent of the quota in these posts was reserved for the children of freedom fighters and their grandchildren.
Apart from this, there would be 10 percent of seats for women, 10 percent for residents of backward districts, 5 percent for minorities, and 1 percent for the disabled.
The High Court bench of Justice KM Kamrul Quader and Justice Khizir Hayat ordered the reinstatement of the quota on June 5 after the final hearing of the ruling issued in a writ petition by the children of freedom fighters.
Jobs stalled due to the continuous strike of teachers and staff. Jobs stalled due to the continuous strike of teachers and staff.
Senior lawyer after the verdict. Munsurul Haque Chowdhury said that only the ninth to 13th grade quota was canceled without canceling the entire quota. The High Court has declared it illegal and invalid. Henceforth, there is no bar to recruiting their children in these grades in the freedom fighter quota. Then the state applied to the Appellate Division, seeking suspension of the High Court’s judgment. After the hearing on this matter on Thursday, the Appellate Division upheld the decision of the High Court declaring the decision to abolish the freedom fighter quota system in the first and second classes of government jobs as invalid.
