Govt may skim off OBC creamy layer

Govt is considering inserting a clause to this effect in the enabling draft bill on quota, writes Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 26, 2006, 10:08:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The creamy layer among OBCs may be excluded from the proposed 27 per cent reservation for the category in central education institutions.

The government is considering inserting a clause to this effect in the enabling draft bill on the OBC quota. Sources said the revised bill was expected to be forwarded to the PMO for examination by Monday.

The government got the legal opinion that the Supreme Court had in 1992 (in the Indira Sawhney vs Government of India case) directed it to exclude 'socially advanced persons/sections, defined as creamy layer, from other backward classes'.

An official said the judgment was applicable even for admissions since the court did not restrict it to jobs. The judgment made only one exemption: for states where reservation for OBCs is already applicable.

Earlier this week, the CPM politburo had sought the exemption of the creamy layer from OBC reservation. It has also been the demand of anti-quota medicos.

Though the Department of Personnel and Training has specified a criterion for identifying the creamy layer for OBC reservation in jobs, the government will have the power to decide the criterion for admissions.

Another insertion in the revised draft will be about extending the OBC quota to all deemed universities.

Among those who come in the creamy layer (as per a 2004 government circular) are: persons whose parent(s) is (are) Class I officer; persons having gross annual income of Rs 2.50 lakh and above; persons whose parents own irrigated land equal to or more than 85 per cent of the ceiling limit in terms of irrigated land as per state ceiling laws.

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.