THE VEERAPPA Moily committee on the OBC reservation issue is divided on the issue of the creamy layer. Three members ---- Planning Commission member B.C. Mungerkar, UGC chairperson S.K. Thorat and AICTE vice-chairperson R A Yadav --- want that the final report of the panel should completely skirt the contentious issue, Moily has reportedly overruled them.
THE VEERAPPA Moily committee on the OBC reservation issue is divided on the issue of the creamy layer. Three members ---- Planning Commission member B.C. Mungerkar, UGC chairperson S.K. Thorat and AICTE vice-chairperson R A Yadav --- want that the final report of the panel should completely skirt the contentious issue, Moily has reportedly overruled them.
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In the two-day national consultations held earlier this week, Moily said the committee would present its 'considered view' on the creamy layer issue in the final report.
Members opposing him contended that the committee can't deliberate on the creamy layer, as it is not in the committee's terms of reference.
Moily has, however, favoured an open-ended approach against a restrictive one. All the issues under 27 per cent OBC quote regime can be deliberated by the committee, he said. "We have to submit our recommendations, the final decision is of the government," he had said on Tuesday.
The creamy layer has left the Indian political class divided. Parties like RJD, LJP, DMK and PMK forced the HRD ministry to expunge any mention of the issue from the OBC reservation bill placed before in the Cabinet, while agreeing for staggered implementation.
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The Left Front has opposed giving the benefits of reservation to the privileged among the OBCs. "To be fair to people from weaker background, creamy layer should be kept out," he said, CPM’s Sitaram Yechury has said.
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The Left Front has opposed giving the benefits of reservation to the privileged among the OBCs. "To be fair to people from weaker background, creamy layer should be kept out," he said, CPM’s Sitaram Yechury has said.
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Further discussions on the issue is likely to take place in the Parliamentary standing committee, to which the OBC reservation bill has been referred. The committee headed by Janardhan Diwedi of the Congress has vocal Left members like Basudeb Acharaya.
Meanwhile, the oversight committee has rejected a demand by IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Khozikode to allow four years to implement the quota regime. "We have asked them to submit a roadmap to implement quota in three years," a member said.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
