In mission to trigger review of State OBC lists, NCBC hits a wall of absent socio-economic data
For the past year or so, the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), under the chairmanship of former Union Minister Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, has been focused on triggering a pruning of State OBC lists in a bid to re-evaluate the continued inclusion of communities that might have progressed from years of accruing benets.
This exercise has led the commission to now question the “abundance” of Muslim communities on the OBC lists of States such as Karnataka and West Bengal and in the latter’s case, it has also stalled requests to include around 80 castes/communities on the Central OBC list, questioning the validity of the reports relied upon by the State government.
It is soon planning for similar State reviews of Kerala, Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra and other States, where it also intends to ensure that the maximum available OBC reservation within the 50% limit is granted.
‘Evaluating progress’
As the NCBC starts invoking powers granted to it under the 102nd Constitution Amendment brought in by the Modi government, to “evaluate progress of OBCs in States”, its e¤orts are being cited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his attacks on the Congress’s social justice platform. And while the NCBC repeatedly asks the States to justify continued inclusions on their OBC lists, it faces a singular hurdle — that of absent data on current socio-economic conditions of OBCs — and is pressing on States such as West Bengal and Karnataka to produce this information.
The Congress’s key social justice plank for the ongoing elections has been the promise of a nationwide socio-economic caste census.
Mr. Ahir took charge of the NCBC in December 2022 and within three months started the State review of West Bengal. “In a State where Muslims are in the minority, 118 of the 180 OBC communities in the State were Muslim. This is not possible,” Mr. Ahir told The Hindu.
The NCBC has been in touch with the West Bengal government multiple times since then, repeatedly seeking survey reports that justify the present-day backwardness of the communities that are in its OBC list.
He said this is why the NCBC had also returned a proposal for including around 80 of the State’s communities in the Central OBC list for the time being. But senior State government ocials in West Bengal maintained that they could only give data on the communities’ condition when the decision to include them in the State list was taken and not after.
A senior NCBC ocial, however, noted that the 2015 judgment in Ram Singh vs Union of India mandated OBC communities to be identied based on their “contemporaneous” conditions. “The NCBC is maintaining that it needs to look into the surveys and evaluate them to ensure they meet Mandal Commission criteria of categorising OBCs,” the ocial said.
The ocial further pointed to a provision in State laws that mandated a decadal review of OBC communities to study the progress of communities due to accruing benets and duly exclude them if required. These are the same arguments behind the NCBC’s State review in Karnataka, where it is now questioning the basis on which Muslims in the State continue to be considered backward under Category II-B.
Mr. Ahir said, “Eventually, these communities in the State lists will want to be included in the Central list and so we must look into their current status.” But in the absence of this, what the Commission is noting is representation in State services, making a case that this would be enough to inform if a community has progressed.