Under Article 16 of indian constitution , right to equality has now often been extended to right to equality of opportunity for equal work among all sections of india. In the Randhir singh vs union of india case the same principal got resonated , Equal Remuneration Act 1976 and article 39 d of our constitution too speak the same tongue .
Mostly Employment exchange act was brought about by government of india to bring more transparency in hiring processes of PSU s and bring about a equal opportunity to all .Employment exchanges of today ,usually keep records of qualification of the registered candidates but somehow in between have lost the battle of prominence with websites like freshers world , naukri.com and linked in.If the trend of hiring and a choice is provided to a hr recruiter to hire key personnel for key positions of organisational structure , then he or she usually will more likely contact naukri.com,fresherworld or linked in or maybe it can opt to conduct a all india test after providing advertisements in leading national daily newspapers.Some how in between the ones who lost out were primarily the ones for whom this act was made. The act was made for people who belong to economically weaker sections of the society who cant compete with the more literate and influential sections of society . In current scenerio although many PSUs still follow the guidelines laid down for them under the act but then most PSUs have started to hire from leading college campuses and not reliant on the labour records provided by the Employment exchanges.Employment exchanges are somewhere seen as time consuming (with very high turnaround time ) where as mostly in private sector the total turn around time allotted for filling a vacancy is usually low .Hence to meet the demands comes in freshers world ,naukri.com and so on. Owing to the speed of appropriate candidate search, even third party hiring agencies have become popular of late.
As on date, Most states still maintain employment exchanges from a compliance angle , where various Labour law related information and ammendments are prominently displayed but in effect it some how has lost the edge as it used to have in late 1960s and 1970s where mostly almost anyone unemployed used to go and register in employment exchanges. From a personal experience also i have seen that some of my friends who did their Btech /be from unknown private engineering colleges and did not get job did not still like to get their name enlisted in employment exchanges. They were far more ready to go to Bangalore and contact a third party hiring agency for assistance in job search at hefty cost of 30000 rs and more per candidate than going to the state assisted route of employment owing to the lack of surety of a good job and also very high turn around time in these processes.

Having said that , now lets revisit the main thing that is employment exchange act and scrutinise which are the sections from which the rot might have stemmed.

If one goes through the above table of section wise analysis of the act , the most common opinion that comes through is the lack of intent to forcefully drive the act from the government side which has some how over a period of time led to greater dilution . While acts like Factory Act 1948 , ID Act 1947, TU Act 1926 , Inter State Migration Workers act 1979 are still dominant across the labour landscape of india regulation various labour related issues , some how employment exchanges act has not been able to create the same impact in india of today. However, it must be said , that to leave a few provisions open to modification based on need of executioner , in effect adds to flexibility of implementation , but to leave an act carried out in essence to provide equal employment opportunities to weaker segments in such an open ended manner does not justify the overall creation purpose of the act. As per me , in order for the act to maintain its relevance , it is high time that government of india should amend it along with most other labour laws and associate clearly defined responsibilities to concerned persons rather than keeping it open ended for greater flexibility. Penalties like that of Rs 500 simply in current price system is not justifiable and is not a deterrent either . A minimum cutoff of jobs that needs to be hired from employment exchanges as a percentage of total vacancies should also be put in place so as to encourage more relevance to the employment exchanges and not lead many to invest huge amounts of money in hope of job in private job searchers , many of whom often turn out to be false hope givers and cheaters. So , in view of changed india of today and for a better tomorrow ,this act in particular needs to be looked into and possibly revised.