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Mahesh

24/01/24 06:43 AM IST

Bharat Ratna to Karpoori Thakur

In News
  • The Centre  announced it would award the Bharat Ratna posthumously to Karpoori Thakur, former chief minister of Bihar.
Karpoori Thakur
  • Thakur was born in village Pitaunjhia (now known as Karpoori Gram), in the Samastipur district of Bihar.
  • He participated in the freedom struggle and was also jailed for it.
  • In independent India, he was voted in as an MLA in 1952.
  • He remained an MLA till his death in 1988, except when he became an MP in 1977 and when he lost an Assembly election in 1984, amid the sympathy wave for Congress after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
  • Thakur was education minister of Bihar from March 5 1967 to January 28, 1968. He became the state’s chief minister in December 1970 with the Samyukta Socialist Party, but his government fell after six months.
  • He came to the post again in June 1977, but could not finish a full term, losing power in about two years. This happened due to a reservation policy he implemented, on which we’ll elaborate later.
Major Policy decisions
  • Thakur is known for many of his decisions — removing English as compulsory subject for the matriculation examinations; prohibition of alcohol; preferential treatment for unemployed engineers in government contracts, through which around 8,000 of them got jobs; and a layered reservation system.
  • It was this last decision that went on to have the loudest impact for Bihar as well as the country.
  • In June 1970, the Bihar government appointed the Mungeri Lal Commission, which in its report of February 1976 named 128 “backward” communities, 94 of which were identified as “most backward”.
  • The Janata Party government of Thakur implemented the recommendations of the Commission.
  • The ‘Karpoori Thakur Formula’ provided 26% reservation, of which OBCs got a 12% share, the economically backward classes among the OBCs got 8%, women got 3%, and the poor from the “upper castes” got 3%.
  • This was much before the central government came up with the EWS quota, and demands of layered reservation gained momentum amid caste census demands.
Source- Indian Express

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