'Give top priority to non-creamy layer'

The parliamentary panel apparently agrees with Oversight Committee on the issue, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2006, 22:53:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A parliamentary committee on Friday recommended preference to non-creamy layer in 27 per cent OBC reservation in government-aided educational institutions. Only if the reserved seats remain vacant, OBC creamy layer should be accommodated on order of merit, the standing committee on HRD, said.

In a report on the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Bill, 2006, tabled in Parliament, the committee apparently agreed with Veerappa Moily on the creamy layer issue.

Moily, who headed the Oversight Committee to prepare a road map to implement quota, told the committee that inclusion of creamy layer would result in reserved seats being pre-empted by OBCs from higher income group. “Almost all rural and urban OBCs from northern, central and eastern regions would be deprived,” the report said. And, apparent beneficiaries would be OBCs from southern states who have been empowered due to consistent reservation policy.

The Parliamentary panel also quoted a case study of Karnataka, done for the Oversight Committee, to suggest that OBC quotas have been utilized without any compromise with academic excellence where creamy layer had been excluded.

The issue of exclusion of creamy layer had divided the ruling UPA. While Left parties favoured exclusion of creamy layer, UPA allies like DMK and PMK strongly opposed any such move. Finally, the government decided to extent OBC reservation to all including creamy layer through this bill.

The issue exemption to minority education institutions from reservation invited a dissent note from six BJP members. "We fully support the 27 per cent reservation for socially and educationally backward classes based on caste but we oppose the religion based reservation which is neither conforming to the Constitution nor in the interest of Backward classes," the dissent note said. However, the committee said, the interests of socially and educationally backwards among minorities may be taken care of through suitable mechanism to ensure proper access.

The committee also recommended a monitoring mechanism for implementation of reservation and wanted that women should not get sidelined in the scheme of things, as usually happens. The OBC students who get admission through merit should not be adjusted against the quota and institutions should be made accountable to ensure that the quota is filled, the report said.

The committee also recommended a comprehensive survey of the total population, which can bring out the social, educational and economic profile of each cast/community/section of society. The 1931 caste census is very old, the report said.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
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.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.