To Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes add another Scheduled Castes, raise job quota over 50%: Ministry

The Ministry of Social Justice is piloting an amendment in the Constitution to add denotified tribes as a new beneficiary of reservation with the job quota ceiling raised beyond 50 percent — the limit fixed by the Supreme Court — to accommodate them.

In a Cabinet note to the Ministry of Home Affairs this month, the Ministry has asked it to consider the proposal of the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes to provide reservation to them by adding a new Article 342A defining the tribes as a ‘Scheduled Community’.

“Once a denotified tribe is notified as a scheduled community, delete it from the list of scheduled tribe, scheduled castes or Other Backward Castes, as the case may be... Reserve 10 percent of Government jobs for DNTs even if the ceiling of 50 percent is exceeded,” the Ministry restates the recommendations while pushing the First Stage Proposals for Action.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Centre ready with Article 355 rocket for Orissa, Karnataka

In a late-night move, the Centre was reported to be preparing the ground for a politically controversial move of invoking Article 355 against Orissa and Karnataka, the two NDA-ruled states which are witnessing large-scale targeted attacks on the Christian minority community over the last few weeks ostensibly in protest against conversions.

Article 355, one of the most rarely used provisions of the Constitution, enshrines on the Central Government a “duty to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.

Article 355 is one of the three controversial “emergency provisions” in the Constitution along with Article 352, which empowers the Centre to impose a national Emergency, and Article 356, which enables it to dismiss a state government.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Judges must return today or I go: Sharif

Pakistan’s fledgling coalition government was plunged into crisis today after former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif threatened to pull out unless judges sacked by former President Pervez Musharraf were not reinstated by tomorrow.

Sharif, who heads the PML(N), the second largest constituent of the coalition, said, “If the judges are not restored we will perhaps be forced to sit in the opposition. We will not try to bring the government down. But, of course, then we have no choice but sit in the opposition.”

The PML(N)’s coalition with Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) “came into being on the basis that democracy would be strengthened and judges restored”, Sharif said.

“And, of course, we would restore the Constitution as it stood before Musharraf overthrew an elected government,” he added.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com