A GO which breached many a protocol

LUCKNOW: There was not just one protocol which was not followed before getting the controversial GO on the reservation in sports issued. The controversial GO led to the suspension of principal sports secretary Harish Chandra.
The normal procedure is that any policy decision is put up before the cabinet. A GO can be issued only after the cabinet’s approval.
So far as the 50 per cent reservation of seats in sports colleges and hostels in the state is concerned, Harish Chandra was allegedly found guilty on two counts.
Besides the proposal not being tabled before the cabinet, Harish Chandra, in a bid to impress the CM, is believed to have deleted an important noting in the contentious GO that irked Mayawati. Infuriated as she was, the CM immediately suspended the principal sports secretary.
When the GO was issued on August 24 through serial 3237/42-2002-26/establishment/2002, it did not have the crucial recommendation, according to which, in case the seats are not filled up by the SC/ST or OBC candidates, they would go to general candidates.
So the GO was incomplete without that part of the remark. Besides, it did not mention specifically anything about the fate of the seats which might have remained vacant if the SC/ST or OBC candidates were not selected within the purview of the quota.
If that clause had been intact, the GO would not have been as controversial as it was. The state government acted swiftly and first suspended principal sports secretary. Then the government also removed Dr Kashmir Singh, one of the CM’s secretary in charge of sports and home, to save its face.
Coalition partner of the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, also launched a broadside on the government for pushing politics directly into sports through the reservation GO.
But it may be observed that the proposal to legalise reservation in sports came up twice during the earlier BJP regimes. First it was when the BSP-BJP combine was in power, the then sports secretary Khanjan Lal made the proposal under the Special Component Plan and forwarded it to the then sports minister Shyam Sunder Sharma.
On the recommendation of the sports directorate, Sharma had rejected it outrightly. The directorate had advised that since sports involved a lot of physical contacts, it might cause serious injuries to inferior players or to those who were not up to the mark. The directorate also added that the reservation would be against the spirit that sports carried the world over.
The reservation in sports file was prepared once again during the tenure of BJP sports minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh. This time the proposal was prepared by JN Chamber. But the minister, foreseeing the troubles the GO entailed, had also scrapped it.