Sikkim Democratic Front president Pawan Chamling on Tuesday hit back at the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, asking it to stop indulging in whataboutery and, instead, act on its promise of regularising the jobs of the over 18,000 employees appointed under the “One Family One Job” scheme.

Weighing in on the raging OFOJ issue, Chamling pointed out that SKM had tried to spread a canard before the last Assembly election in April 2019 by claiming that the beneficiaries of the scheme would risk losing their jobs if SDF were to come back to power.

“They also promised to regularize the OFOJ within 100 days of their governance. I think people are more interested to know why the SKM government failed to deliver on that promise,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

On Sunday, the Sikkim Subject Committee had organised a day-long dharna in Gangtok, demanding regularisation of OFOJ jobs. Three persons had also recently filed a petition against the policy in the High Court of Sikkim.

Chamling, whose SDF government had started the OFOJ policy in 2019, dismissed allegations that the high court petition was a conspiracy hatched by his party as “laughable”. “The three petitioners know who is behind the case. They only know the truth. I respect the court and I will be saying nothing as the matter is sub-judice. The SDF will never risk the future of our poor people for political gain.”

The five-time former chief minister said his government had designed the OFOJ scheme for the benefit of the weaker sections since the caste, community and gender-based quota system had only benefitted the creamy layers.

“There is a section that has been deprived of any opportunities for ages despite these reservations. When we realised that caste, community and gender-based reservations failed to reach down to that level, we formulated this scheme which I call a ‘humanitarian-based ultra-reservation’ for the weakest section of society,” he said.

Chamling said there were an estimated 40,000 families without a single government job when the scheme was launched and the appointments were made on an ad-hoc basis initially with the provision for regularisation after five years. “That period of five years would have helped them to get ‘on-the-job training’ and to learn needed skills,” he said.

This scheme, he said, was also designed to increase rural jobs. “We created village-centric posts such as Village Police Guards, Environment Protection Guards, Village Marketing Assistants, Village Health Assistants, etc...,” he added.