HC quashes Hry law on 75% quota in pvt sector

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday struck down a Haryana law that reserved 75% private sector jobs, paying up to ₹30,000 a month, for local candidates and found it unconstitutional, delivering a setback to the Manohar Lal Khattar government less than a year before assembly polls.

- Surender Sharma

A two-judge bench of the high court quashed the 2021 law as unconstitutional and violative of Part III (fundamental rights) of the Constitution. The judges held that notions about individual rights have to be in accordance with the text and spirit of the Constitution and not popular or majoritarian notions.

"The state cannot direct the private employers to do what has been forbidden to do under the Constitution of India. It cannot as such discriminate against the individuals on account of the fact that they do not belong to a certain state and have a negative discrimination against other citizens of the country," the 83-page verdict by justices GS Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan said.

"The state, thus, was acting with a telescopic vision and the statute as such is liable to fall foul of the principles laid down by the constitutional judgments of the apex court and the Constitution itself. The concept of constitutional morality has been openly violated by introducing a secondary status to a set of citizens not belonging to the state of Haryana and curtailing their fundamental rights to earn their livelihood," the bench said.

The court also cautioned that the Haryana law could lead to similar pieces of legislation in other parts of the country. It observed that it was beyond the purview of the state to legislate on the issue and restrict a private employer from recruiting from the open market.