The government has cleared a 10 per cent quota in jobs and educational institutions for the economically weaker sections, sources told Hindustan Times after a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government is ready with a Constitution amendment bill which will be introduced in parliament tomorrow, the last day of the Winter Session.
The decision comes months before the government’s tenure is to end in a few months and the country is headed into election mode.
The bill seeks to amend two constitutional provisions, Articles 15 and 16, which prohibit discrimination on any grounds in jobs and admissions to educational institutions.
People who have an annual income less than 8 lakh, own less than 5 acre farm land, have house smaller than 1,000 sq feet in a town or a 100 sq yard house in notified municipal area would qualify for the proposed quotas.
The move, a BJP leader hinted, would come in handy to deal with reservation demands from communities that had been demanding that they be counted as other backward classes, or OBCs that have 27 per cent quota for government jobs and admission to educational institutions.
It would also help the national coalition led by the BJP to consolidate its the upper caste vote, considered one of the three crucial pillars of the BJP’s support base. The other backward classes (OBC), and the new Dalit sub-castes who shifted loyalties, are considered the other two pillars.
Already, the BJP, which had gone to great lengths to neutralise the dilution of the SC/ST atrocities law last year, had ended up antagonising the upper castes far beyond what it had anticipated. In the recent assembly elections where it lost three states to the Congress, there had been anecdotal evidence that the upper castes had, in some cases, shifted.
Dalit leader and junior social justice minister Ramdas Athawale had earlier supposed reservation for upper castes, arguing that since quotas could not be ended, parliament should give 25 per cent reservation to the upper castes.
“I welcome wholeheartedly reservation given to economically… Now the ceiling will be raised from 50 to 60 per cent… Parliament is very much empowered to raise this ceiling,” BJP MP and Udit Raj said.