Lucknow: For a government that claims to be for the youth, of the youth and by the youth, the number of applications for the posts of peons in the UP secretariat can be an eye-opener. For 368 posts, about 17, 47, 824 have applied explicitly defining the unemployment in UP.
What is even more shocking is the fact that among the applicants, 201 hold doctorate degrees and 20,000 have master’s degree in various disciplines.
Over one lakh applicants have B.Tech and B.Ed degrees. The number of applicants with a high school qualification is around 8 lakhs.
The secretariat administration that will be recruiting the employees is now at their wits’ end.
Prabhat Mittal, who heads the department, admitted, “We never expected such huge number of applicants. We invited application online to introduce an element of transparency in the process. We did not foresee such a massive response. The last date of applying is Friday and the figure is likely to cross the 20 lakh mark”.
The BJP, meanwhile, said that this belies all the claims being made by the state government in the past three years.
“If young people having a doctorate degree under their arms are willing to work as peons, it is a blot on the face of the system. Our political leaders, who have been taking pride in disbursing laptops and unemployment allowances, should ponder over the situation. Their claims of job generation have fallen flat on their face,” said party spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak.
A senior BSP leader said that the Akhilesh government always claims to be youth-centric, but this had exposed the true face of the government.
In the past three and a half years, the government has failed miserably in providing employment to the youth or even allowing them to become self–reliant. “It should be a matter of shame for the people in power,” the BSP leader said.
Meanwhile, one such applicant who holds a doctorate in sociology and has applied for a peon’s job, said, “I have a widowed mother and three sisters. I am willing to take up a peon’s or even a sweeper’s job. I am already working as a labour on daily wages”.
