Chandigarh: In Haryana, a sub-category of the backward classes (Block A or BC-A) has now been granted its own reservations, carved out of the overall BC quota, for elections to the state’s municipal bodies — a move that may help the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in next year’s parliamentary and assembly polls.
The backward classes in the state are grouped into two ‘blocks’: BC-A and BC-B. The BC-As have often complained that the BC-Bs are politically better placed. This is because the entire population of BCs (A and B) is often counted together and — because of superior social and economic status — the BC-Bs manage to get more tickets in elections and enjoy greater political clout.
According to an official statement issued by the state government Monday, the BC-A category — which has had scant representation in municipal bodies till now — will now have reserved seats as councillors in every municipal committee, municipal council, and municipal corporation.
This announcement by the BJP-Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) government comes in the wake of a similar decision ahead of panchayat elections last year to give reservations to BC-As in Panchayati Raj institutions. In both cases, the cabinet accepted recommendations from the Haryana Backward Classes Commission after the body had conducted empirical inquiries to assess the political representation of the backward classes.
The commission was constituted afresh last year after having been dissolved in 2016, according to a Business Standard report.
In this case, the commission submitted its report to the government Friday and it was accepted Monday. The report found that the castes in Block A were underrepresented and concluded that they require the support of reservation in elections to local bodies and municipalities to ensure adequate participation in the grassroots democratic set-up.
Speaking to ThePrint, Parveen Jora, a member of the BJP’s state executive and coordinator for the Sirsa parliamentary seat, said only the BJP has “listened to the sentiments of the BC-A”. Jora himself is from the BC-A category. He added that this quota would provide representation to those who have remained unrepresented in urban local bodies.
Similarly, Haryana Deputy Speaker Ranbir Gangwa told ThePrint that representation of the BC-A has always been poor.
“The BJP government gave representation to BC-A for the first time in the Rajya Sabha in Haryana when it gave a ticket to Ram Chander Jangra in 2020. Now, by giving representation to the BC-A in PRI (Panchayati Raj Institutions) polls last year and municipal bodies Monday, the Manohar Lal Khattar government has given them political representation at the local self-government level,” said Gangwa.
However, former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, now Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, said the government should have taken this step eight years ago, immediately after coming to power.
“When I was the chief minister, my government announced reservation for BCs in Group A and Group B in jobs. But this government took eight years to provide quotas in municipal bodies,” Hooda said to ThePrint.
Haryana Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala, however, said that the Congress had not provided any quota to BC-A in PRIs and municipal bodies despite Hooda being CM for nearly 10 years.
Elections for several key civic bodies in the state — including the municipal corporations of Gurugram, Manesar and Faridabad, apart from some smaller municipalities — are due to be held in the next few months.
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Haryana’s backward classes
Jora claims the backward classes overall comprise 27 per cent of Haryana’s population and, according to Gangwa, the government believes the BC-A account for 18 per cent.
According to Satbir Birthalia, a prominent BC-A leader from Haryana, before the Mandal Commission had recommended a 27 per cent quota in jobs for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in 1990, the Backward Classes used to get 10 per cent reservation.
In 1996, a body set up by the Haryana government to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission further divided the 27 per cent quota for OBCs into two categories – 16 per cent for Backward Classes – Block A and 11 per cent for Backward Classes – Block B.
The central government uses ‘OBC’ as a collective term to classify castes that are educationally or socially backward. Haryana refers to this category as simply, ‘backward classes’.
“The Centre gives 27 per cent quota for OBCs, while Haryana gives 16 and 11 per cent quota for BC-A and BC-B, respectively, for Group C and Group D jobs in the state govt. For Group A and Group B jobs, the quota is 10 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively,” he said.
“If we have to apply for any post in the central government, the BC-A certificate issued by the Haryana government doesn’t work. We have to obtain an OBC certificate for that,” Birthalia added.
According to the official website of the Directorate of Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, 72 castes are included in the BC-A category in Haryana.
Historically, these were landless communities engaged in jobs such as making iron tools (Lohar), preparing earthen pitchers (Kumhar), melting and designing gold (Sunar), washing clothes (Dhobi), roasting grams and groundnuts (Bharbhunja), and extracting oil from oilseeds (Teli).
On the other hand, six castes are included in the Backward Classes Block-B sub-category: Yadav/Ahir Gujjar, Lodha, Saini, Meo, and Goswami. Those in BC-B have been relatively better placed and are more likely to own land.
The state has seen many leaders from the BC-B category in the past — former CM Rao Birender Singh and former ministers Rao Abhay Singh, former MPs Gurdial Singh Saini and Raj Kumar Saini, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, Tayyab Hussain and Khurshid Ahmed.
In the present generation of leaders, Union ministers Rao Inderjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh Yadav and Krishan Pal Gurjar are from BC-B. In the present state assembly, Kanwar Pal, Dharam Singh Chhoker, Rao Dan Singh, Abhay Singh Yadav, Om Prakash Yadav, Laxman Singh Yadav, Chiranjeev Rao, Bishan Lal Saini, Rajesh Nagar, Aftab Ahmed and Mohammad Ilyas are some BC-B leaders.
In contrast, Gangwa and Indri MLA Ram Kumar Kashyap are currently the only BC-A representatives in the state assembly.
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New reservation breakup
Haryana has 88 municipal bodies. Of these, 11 are municipal corporations (Gurugram, Faridabad, Manesar, Panchkula, Karnal, Panipat, Rohtak, Hisar, Ambala, Sonipat, and Yamunanagar), and 23 are municipal councils, while the remaining 54 are municipal committees in towns with smaller populations.
At present, seats are reserved for SCs in the municipal bodies in proportion to their population. Besides this, women are given reservations of one-third of the total seats in municipal bodies. The reservation for women is a quota within a quota, which means that general category women will get one-third quota in general seats and SC women among SC seats. One to two seats are reserved for BCs depending on the size of the municipal body.
Now, according to the state government’s release, the percentage of seats to be reserved in a specific municipal body will be half the percentage of the BC-A population in that urban area. If the decimal value of the eligible seats for reservation is more than 0.5, it will be rounded off to the next higher integer.
“For instance, if a certain urban locality has a BC-A population of 25 per cent, then 12.5 per cent of seats in that specific municipal body will be reserved for individuals from the category,” the release states.
However, all municipal bodies will have at least one councillor’s seat reserved for BC-A, provided the population of these communities is not less than 2 per cent.
As far as the posts of mayors and presidents are concerned, 8 per cent of the total number of these posts will be reserved for the BC-A category. Again, the number will be rounded off to the next higher integer in case the decimal value “comes to 0.5 or more”.
However, the Haryana Backward Classes Commission has clarified that, in accordance with the directions of the Supreme Court, the total reserved quota — for the BC-As and Scheduled Castes (SCs) together — will never exceed 50 per cent of the total seats in any particular urban local body or municipality. The state government release doesn’t mention any specific percentage of reservation for the undifferentiated BC category.
In case the combined total of seats reserved for the SCs and the BC-A categories exceeds 50 per cent of the total seats in a particular municipality, the number reserved for BC-A will be limited to the largest possible number that, when added to the reserved SC seats, does not exceed 50 per cent.
In case the population of the SCs is 50 per cent or more in any given urban area, the BC-As will not get any reservation, irrespective of their share of the population.
Where the population of SCs is 40 per cent of the population of the urban local body and, say, there are 10 seats in the urban local area, four seats will be reserved for the SCs and the remaining one seat shall be available for reservation for the BC-A.
Speaking to ThePrint, State Election Commissioner Dhanpat Singh clarified that once the government sends its recommendations after the cabinet decision, the quota will be applicable in all future polls, including elections for the Gurugram and Faridabad municipal corporations, and for the newly carved out Manesar Municipal Corporation.
‘Bound to help BJP politically’
Speaking to The Print, Yoginder Gupta, a Panchkula-based political analyst, said that by giving a quota to the BC-A in the PRIs last year and in the municipal bodies now, the BJP has played it smart to win over people from these castes.
“This move is bound to help the party politically in next year’s parliamentary and assembly polls,” he added.
However, Ram Niwas Ghorela — the Congress MLA for Barwala from 2014 to 2019 — said he has been campaigning for a BC-A quota, and that the BJP-JJP government had announced this only under pressure from the Congress.
Ghorela said he has been organising rallies for this cause over the past year and that Hooda has been addressing them.
“We organised our first rally in May last year at Fatehabad and the government announced the setting up of the Haryana Backward Classes Commission. Our next rally was in July 2022 in Gohana and the government announced a quota for BC-A in the PRIs,” said Ghorela, adding that the quota announced for the PRIs and municipal bodies was still not enough, and that it should be like the job quota of 16 per cent for BC-A and 11 per cent for BC-B.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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