ITANAGAR, 29 May: The Arunachal Frontier Tribal Front (AFTF) urged the chief minister to completely scrap the 80:20 recruitment ratio followed by the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) and the Arunachal Pradesh Staff Selection Board (APSSB).

Calling it obsolete and harmful to the indigenous people of the state, the organisation demanded that Scheduled Tribe (ST) certificates, permanent residence certificates, and tribal languages/dialects of Arunachal be made mandatory in the eligibility criteria of all examinations conducted by the APPSC and the APSSB to bar ‘outsiders’.

The organisation said that similar safeguards are already in place in states like Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Assam and Nagaland, and urged the chief minister to take a cue from these states.

The organisation also stated in the memorandum that it had conducted awareness-cum-signature campaign on 28 January this year, “where more than 25,000 people signed the petition supporting the scrapping of 80:20 ratio criteria.”

“Moreover, Arunachal Pradesh is a sensitive tribal state with fragile demographic structure, and the existence of 80:20 ratio criteria in the reservation policy can adversely affect the  state’s socio-cultural, economic and political ecosystem,” the memorandum read.

It stated that the 80:20 ratio criteria was started in 1990, when the state’s literacy rate was extremely low and there were hardly any qualified APST candidates against the number of vacancies.

The organisation urged the chief minister to take the issue seriously and address it by 30 June.