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Polity & Governance
Mahesh

17/11/23 10:33 AM IST

Sub-categorisation within castes

In News
  • Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to look into the sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes (SCs) to identify and help the most backward among them.
Legal issue of Sub-categorisation
  • The issue first reached the courts when the Andhra Pradesh government in 1996 formed a one-man Commission of Justice Ramachandra Raju, which recommended sub-categorisation of SCs in the State based on evidence that some communities were more backward and had less representation than others.
  • When the State government tried to implement this recommendation, the matter went to the judiciary, eventually making its way to the Supreme Court, which in 2004, held that the State did not have the power to unilaterally sub-categorise communities in the list of SCs or Scheduled Tribes (STs).
  • The Constitution has provided that these lists can only be made by Parliament and notified by the President.
  • However, while hearing a challenge to Punjab’s attempt at doing the same, a five-judge Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra had held in a 2020 judgment, that deciding on the quantum of benefits in the lists of SCs/STs already notified would not amount to “tinkering” with it and that States could do it.
Article 16
  • The Union government formed a National Commission to look into the question of sub-categorising SCs in Andhra Pradesh and the then Cabinet recommended an amendment to Article 341 of the Constitution of India to allow for it.
  • But both the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) had opined that a constitutional amendment was not necessary.
  • They said that Article 16(4) of the Constitution already provided for States to create special laws for any backward classes it felt was under-represented.
Recommendations of Various Commissions
  • Both the SC and ST Commissions have noted that allotting separate reservations within the categories would not really address the root cause of the problem.
  • In an internal note prepared by the NCST, it had explained that the most backward SCs are lagging so far behind forward SC communities that a separate quota would not help.
  • It said that the idea was to ensure representation at all levels. But given the disparity, even if posts were reserved at higher levels, these most backward SCs would not have enough candidates to be considered for it in the first place.
  • Both the NCSC and the NCST had thus recommended that existing schemes and government benefits should first reach these sections before any sub-categorisation.
Way Forward
  • What is primarily needed is concrete population numbers of each community and sub-community and their respective socio-economic data, which are the only thing that can provide a reasonable ground to decide how castes can be categorised, how much percentage should be given, etc.”
Source- The Hindu

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