Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 9: The Bihar Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a bill to increase reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Extremely Backward Classes in state jobs and educational institutions to 65 per cent, well past the 50 per cent cap set by the Supreme Court. This is in addition to the Centre’s 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).
The amended bill will now be sent to the governor Rajendra Arlekar for his assent before it becomes law. The Chief Minister Nitish Kumar assured the House members that his government would implement the provisions of the Bill as soon as possible.
Bills providing the same reservation in educational institutions and government jobs drafted in view of the caste survey conducted by the state government recently, too were passed unanimously through voice vote in the state assembly.
The Bill which was passed in the State Assembly said the reservation quota for Extremely Backward Class (EBC) will be raised from the existing 18% to 25%, for Backward Classes from existing 12% to 18%, for Scheduled Castes to 20% from 16% and it will be doubled for the Scheduled Tribes from 1% to 2%. The existing 3% reservation for women from Backward Classes has been scrapped. The amended bill excludes the central government’s mandatory 10 per cent reservation for individuals from Economically Weaker Sections, and will take total quotas to 75 per cent.
The amendments were passed amid ruckus inside and outside the Bihar Assembly over the Chief Minister’s remark this week on women’s education and population control. Nitish Kumar had proposed the amendment on Tuesday, hours after his government tabled the full report of the contentious state-wide caste survey. The report said 36 per cent of the Bihar’s 13.1 crore people are from EBCs and 27.1 per cent are from Backward Classes. Of the rest, 19.7 per cent are from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes make up 1.7 per cent of the population. The General Category accounts for 15.5 per cent of the population, the report said. This means that over 60 per cent of Bihar hails from OBCs or EBCs.
Data from the survey was presented amid BJP claims that data about population of the Yadav – to which Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav belongs – and Muslim communities was manipulated. The Yadav community, which will benefit from 18 per cent reservation for OBC groups, is the largest sub-group, accounting for 14.27 per cent of the category.
The report also said 42 per cent of all Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe families live in poverty, and that 34 per cent of all families in the state survive on less than ₹ 6,000 per month. Also according to the data, less than six per cent of individuals from Scheduled Castes had finished their schooling; i.e., cleared Class 11 and Class 12.
The report was initially criticised by the BJP. In a sharp response hours after data was released, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had accused the opposition of “trying to divide the country in the name of caste.” However, in a bid to garner the support of the backward classes, the union home minister Amit Shah said last week that the BJP remained open to the idea of a nation-wide caste census, so long as due diligence was done.
The data – coming months before next year’s Lok Sabha poll – underlines the electoral importance of the backward and marginalised communities both for the BJP, which has opposed calls for a national caste census, and the opposition, which has been increasingly more and more vocal on the subject.
“If need be, there could be more raise in this reservation quota as well and I’ll be happy for this,” said Mr Kumar while adding, “his government will implement the raise in quota as soon as possible.” “If special status to Bihar is given by the Centre, Bihar will excel more,” Mr Kumar repeatedly said. When a BJP legislator raised the question over so much money to be spent on raising the reservation quota, Mr Kumar said, “the State government has to bear over ₹2.5 lakh crore in implementing it but, if the BJP legislators would push for special status being given to the State by the Centre, Bihar will excel and develop more.”
The Opposition BJP which initially had supported the raise in reservation along with other eight political parties in the state, later criticised it on several grounds, including, “that it will disturb social harmony in the society.” But the state BJP president Samrat Choudhury later said, “BJP has always extended support to any party when it is for reservation.”
