New Delhi: To ensure that backward-class status is independent of religion, the Rohini Commission, constituted for examining sub-categorisation of the other backward classes (OBCs), in its report has addressed the Hindu-Muslim anomaly in granting reservation to occupational communities such as darzis (tailors) and julahas (weavers), ThePrint has learnt.
The report, submitted to President Droupadi Murmu on 31 July, has not been made public yet.
The issue of sub-categorisation of OBCs assumes significance ahead of the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, scheduled to be held later this year, and the Lok Sabha elections due in mid-2024. Caste politics is commonly known to play a dominant role in deciding poll outcomes in India.
The commission, headed by Justice G. Rohini, a retired chief justice of the Delhi High Court, was set up in October 2017 to examine the sub-categorisation of OBCs to ensure equitable distribution of reservation benefits. Since 2017, the commission’s term has been extended 13 times.
Though it is not yet known how the panel has sub-categorised the OBCs and split the 27 percent reservation for the category in central government jobs and educational institutions, government sources said the commission has found around 200 religiously-restricted entries in the central list of OBCs, where Hindus belonging to specific occupational communities were not given OBC status unlike their Muslim counterparts.
This has led to socially and economically-backward Hindus from particular occupational classes not being able to avail of the reservation, they added.
“We are addressing this issue. It is unfortunate, but this has been addressed now on the basis of data on who among the OBCs has availed how much benefit in government jobs and education. This is to ensure that people who got inadequate or no benefits also get to avail reservation benefits meant for them,” a government source told ThePrint.
For instance, according to sources, Muslims who belong to the julahas category in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and dhunias (cotton carders) and darzis in Bihar have currently got reservation in the central list of OBCs, but Hindus from the same groups have been left out.
The panel is said to have come across several such instances in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. In Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, for instance, the central list has a separate category for Muslims whose occupational class qualifies them as OBCs, but their Hindu counterparts are not included in the list, sources added.
ThePrint had earlier reported that the commission has found that discrepancies in the central list on religious lines vary from state to state.
ThePrint reached Justice Rohini over phone for a comment but did not receive a response till the time of publication of this report. The article will be updated if she responds.
Besides Justice Rohini, the four-member commission also includes J.K. Bajaj, director, Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai; Gauri Basu, director, Anthropological Survey of India, Kolkata (ex-officio member); and Vivek Joshi, registrar general and census commissioner (ex-officio member).
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‘Social category is not basis of sub-categorisation’
The central list of OBCs has 2,633 entries comprising several classes, communities and sub-communities.
The Rohini Commission had earlier found that just about 40 of 5,000-6,000 castes/communities among the OBCs — which constitute less than one percent of the category — have cornered 50 percent of the reservation benefits in admissions to central educational institutions and recruitment to central services.
Speaking to ThePrint, commission member Bajaj said the data shows gross inequity in the benefits of reservation enjoyed by different communities. “The level of inequity is such that it makes the exercise of sub-categorisation among the OBCs urgent and inescapable,” he added.
Bajaj, however, refused to specify how different communities within the OBC category had been sub-categorised and the percentage of reservation accorded to them.
Explaining further, he said the commission’s recommendations involved a fundamental change in approach.
“So far, we looked at social categories for sub-categorisation of OBCs. [But now] we are not looking at social hierarchy but the capability of the category/class to avail government benefits. Based on this, communities, which are relatively comparable in their numbers and capability to avail the benefits of reservation and can compete with each other, have been grouped in a few sub-categories,” Bajaj told ThePrint.
He added: “We are doing it on the basis of data on who has availed how much of benefit. This way, the sub-categorisation becomes completely objective. This is the basis of deciding who gets how much share of the 27 percent quota.”
The government source mentioned earlier said this approach would ensure that that those from among socially and economically backward groups who are not getting anything will gain something.
“Within the OBC category, there is not going to be much loss but some who were not getting anything will start getting something. Those who have done well will see their share in the reservation decrease marginally,” the source said.
Sub-categorisation of OBCs — a category that comprises thousands of communities and castes — has been a long-standing demand from some sections of society to ensure better distribution of reservation benefits.
The First Backward Class Commission, set up in 1953 and chaired by Kaka Kalelkar, had also proposed sub-categorisation of the OBCs into two groups of backward and extremely backward communities.
In the Second Backward Class Commission, set up in 1979 and headed by B.P. Mandal, sub-categorization was proposed in the dissenting note of L.R. Naik, who divided the list of backward classes in the main report into intermediate and depressed backward classes.
It was in 1980, soon after the Mandal Commission submitted its report recommending 27 percent reservation to OBCs in central government jobs and educational institutions, that the Centre came out with the first list of OBCs. The list has been amended many times since.
The Rohini Commission was originally mandated to look at the distribution of reservation benefits at the central level. Its terms of reference were later expanded to include examining of and recommending correction of any repetition, ambiguities, inconsistencies and spelling errors in the central list of OBCs.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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