Almost two years since the government put lateral entry recruitment on hold after facing demands for implementing reservation in the policy, Union Minister of State for Personnel and Training Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said “no feasible option” had been suggested to the Ministry, leaving the policy in limbo.

Addressing a press conference on the achievements of the Ministry in the past 12 years, the Minister said he was at a loss as to how to implement reservation in standalone posts. Earlier in the press conference, DoPT (Department of Personnel & Training) Secretary Rachna Shah said a total of 63 lateral entry recruitments had been carried out, the last batch in 2023, as a part of the presentation on the achievements. Of those, about two-thirds of the officials were still working in those posts.

After backlash, including from ally LJP (Ram Vilas) president Chirag Paswan, over the lack of reservation, the government decided to withdraw an advertisement for 45 posts in August 2024.

Asked about the status of the lateral entry policy, the Minister said: “Suddenly it came up that ‘you should have reservation’. So I’m at my wit’s end how to go about it. You suggest how to go about it. These are standalone appointments. We tried our best, to the best of our wisdom, to the best of our effort to convince you…In principle, all over standalone posts don’t have this. But then there was so much of pressure from all sides and as this government is very open to inputs, we said ‘ok’. In the spirit of democracy we will go ahead as you wish, but suggest us some model. We are still talking, there is no feasible option given to us.”

However, he added, there was “no order suspending the process”, though there hasn’t been any lateral entry recruitment for a while.

The scheme was introduced in 2018 to hire experts for domain-specific and technical posts at the level of Joint Secretary, Director and Deputy Secretary. A total of 63 such hires were made in 2018, 2021 and 2023.