PANAJI: Goa legislator Vijai Sardesai on Tuesday said he will move a private member’s bill for reserving 80% of jobs in the private sector for state residents.

Sardesai, the president of the Goa Forward Party, moved a similar bill in 2022, when he argued that there was no reason why the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Goa shouldn’t back quotas for locals when the Haryana government led by Manohar Lal Khattar enacted a similar law in 2021.

The Punjab and Haryana high court in November last year struck down Haryana’s law that reserved 75% private sector jobs, paying up to ₹30,000 a month, for local candidates. The high court said the law was unconstitutional, violated fundamental rights and held that notions about individual rights have to be in line with the text and spirit of the Constitution and not popular or majoritarian notions.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Sardesai accused the state government of being indifferent to the plight of the youth.

“@GovtofGoa’s appalling indifference, and sometimes active intervention to block #Goans in their own land is shocking and unacceptable. I’ll never back down from our demand of 80% jobs to Goans in private industries, and I’ve moved a Private Member’s Bill—for the second time!—to this effect,” Sardesai, the lone legislator of his party, said in the post.

Goa industries minister Mauvin Godinho last year rejected attempts to legislate quotas for residents, saying employment of locals could be linked to incentives for industries.

To be sure, chief minister Pramod Sawant was supportive of the demand for a law for reservation in the private sector in 2019 and had then sought six months to deliver on the assurance.