By Hritam Mukherjee and Haripriya Suresh
BENGALURU (Reuters) – Karnataka state’s move to require companies to give 50%-70% of jobs to locals is still in the preparation stage, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on Wednesday, after the draft bill was criticised for making it harder for global companies operating there to attract talent.
“A final decision will be taken (on the bill) after comprehensive discussion in the next cabinet meeting,” Siddaramaiah said on messaging platform X in an edited post.
The draft bill, seen by Reuters, requires employers to give 50% of management jobs and 70% of non-management jobs to candidates from the state of Karnataka.
The bill will need clearance from the Karnataka state legislature to become law.
Karnataka’s tech hub Bengaluru is home to about 14 million people, and thousands of Indian startups and international companies ranging from Walmart to Alphabet’s Google operate from the city in south India. Two Indian tech groups Infosys and Wipro also operate from the city.
Industry leaders criticised the bill, saying it would discriminate against those from outside the state who want to work there.
“There must be caveats that exempt highly skilled recruitment from this policy,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson at drugmaker Biocon.
Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital Partners and former finance chief at Infosys, wrote in a social media post: “The bill should be junked. It is discriminatory, regressive and against the constitution.”
IT industry body Nasscom also urged the state government to withdraw the bill.
The state of Karnataka is led by the opposition Congress party which has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for doing too little to tackle joblessness.
Karnataka is not the first Indian state to try to impose job quotas for local candidates. The northern state of Haryana in 2020 tried to impose a 75% job quota for local hires, but a court later overturned it.
“For a few years now, the sentiment in some urban parts of the state has been for greater local protectionism – from bigger nameboards in Kannada to higher job reservations,” said political analyst Sandeep Shastri.
“This move, to privilege locals, is a response to this sentiment.”
(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee and Haripriya Suresh; Additional reporting by Sai Ishwarbharath B, Ashwin Manikandan, Rishika Sadam, Dimpal Gulwani and Nishit Navin and Sethuraman NR; Editing by Aditya Kalra, Christina Fincher and Jane Merriman)
