The contentious creamy layer issue, currently embroiled in a judiciary-versus-legislature debate, figured in the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on HRD on Thursday.
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Veerappa Moily — who headed the Oversight Committee tasked with defining a roadmap to implement the 27 per cent OBC quota in educational institutions — made a presentation to the standing committee. He told the 31-member standing committee about the recommendations of the Oversight Committee, the roadmap prescribed and deliberations on different issues related to the reservation issue. Moily also referred to the sample studies sponsored by the Oversight Committee in four southern states on the creamy layer issue. Kerala is the only state where the creamy layer concept is applicable in reservation for admission to educational institutions; the other states do not apply any exclusion rule for implementing reservation.
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After the presentation, the standing committee reportedly asked Moily to submit a “comprehensive note” on the creamy layer issue to it before the next meeting, which is slated to be held before mid-November.
The standing committee is expected to submit its report in the winter session of Parliament, starting on November 27. The views of its members on the creamy layer issue are not yet known, though it is believed the MPs will toe stated party lines.
According to sources, committee members also deliberated on the different clauses of the bill and stressed the need to fine-tune some of them.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who was recently inducted into the panel, however, did not attend the meeting. He had attended the earlier meeting held in mid-October.
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The standing committee had on Wednesday heard the opinions of S Rathnavel Pandian, chairman of the National Commission for Backward Classes, and Mohammed Hamid Ansari, who heads the National Commission for Minorities.
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The standing committee had on Wednesday heard the opinions of S Rathnavel Pandian, chairman of the National Commission for Backward Classes, and Mohammed Hamid Ansari, who heads the National Commission for Minorities.
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A Bill providing 27 per cent OBC reservation in aided institutions was introduced in Parliament on August 24 last and was referred to the committee.
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.
