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.

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Rajasthan agrees to 4% special Gurjjar quota

The standoff between Gurjjars agitating for Scheduled Tribe status and the Rajasthan government ended today after the state agreed to provide 4 per cent reservation to the Gurjjar community under a special category. The state also agreed not to raise any objection to the mention of the Gurjjar tribe in the list of 23 caste/tribes sent by the Centre in December 1999, asking Rajasthan if it had any objection to the list under consideration for SC/ST reservation.

The Rajasthan government, sources said, has not agreed to make any specific recommendation of ST status for the Gurjjars but will not stand in the way of a list compiled by the Centre. Incidentally, the list is a compilation of castes and tribes recommended or forwarded by the state from time to time until 1999 for consideration of reservation.

The final announcement of the agreement will be made by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje tomorrow morning. She will make the “solution publicly known”. A senior Rajasthan BJP leader, part of the group representing the state government in talks, said that “the OBC and ST quotas might not be touched at all”.

Gurjjar leader K S Bainsla told The Indian Express: “The talks have been successful and a formal announcement will be made tomorrow morning. All I can say is that the Gurjjars have succeeded in getting a historical breakthrough.”

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OBC quotas in, OBC well-off out

Almost three decades after the Mandal Commission report on affirmative action called for it, the Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling today, up- held the UPRs law providing 27 per cent quota for OBCs in IITs, IIMs and other Central educational institutions but said it would not apply to the "creamy layer".

Headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan, the fivejudge Constitution Bench unanimously ruled in the Ashoka Kumar Thakur versus Union of lndia case that the "creamy layer" must be excluded from the socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs) and continuance of quota under the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 should be periodically reviewed after five years.

The Bench upheld the validity of the Constitution (93rd Amendment) Act 2005, empowering the Centre to come out with the special law for OBC quota in institutions of higher learning. With today's order, reservation in these institutions will go up to 49.5 per cent.

Members of the Bench, which delivered four separate judgements, were unanimous that the 93rd Amendment and the 2006 legislation providing for the quota were "not violative of the basic structure of the Constitution".

The only divergent view was on the constitutional validity of the 93rd Amendment in the case of private unaided institutions. Four judges left the issue open since none of those institutions had approached the court. But Justice Dalveer Bhandari that "imposing reservation on unaided institutions violates the basic structure by stripping

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