Guwahati: The Assam government will soon introduce a stringent verification policy to curb the misuse of reservation benefits meant for tea garden communities, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on Thursday, November 20. The move comes after several cases surfaced in which individuals attempted to claim reservation benefits using fake community certificates.
The Chief Minister said the issue first came to notice during the verification of documents submitted for medical admissions. Authorities detected irregularities in community certificates, leading to concerns that undeserving applicants were trying to take advantage of the quota system. “Since the time of medical admissions, we have seen that when we try to provide benefits to students from tea garden communities, some people attempt to take these benefits using fake certificates. This is something we can never accept,” Sarma stated.
In response, the government separated the lists of tea garden communities in the Barak Valley and Brahmaputra Valley to ensure clearer identification during the verification of medical applications. The Assam Chief Minister said that the verification model used in medical admissions will now be applied to recruitment processes across government departments as well.
The Chief Minister emphasized that strict verification is necessary to make sure only genuine members of tea garden communities, who remain among the most economically and socially backward groups in the state receive the rightful benefits. The new policy will strengthen checks both at the stage of issuing community certificates and while accepting them for admissions or job applications.
Assam currently provides a three per cent reservation for tea garden communities in government recruitment. “In government jobs, to ensure that no one else takes advantage of the 3% reservation meant for tea garden communities, we must establish strict rules. Only then will we be able to support and uplift the genuine youths of these communities,” CM Sarma said.
Reiterating the government’s stance on social media, the Chief Minister added that the tightened system would promote transparency, prevent fraud, and protect the integrity of reservation benefits meant for historically disadvantaged groups.