PM asks Cabinet secy to look at Madiga vertical quota within SC reservation
Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month put into effect his promise in Telangana to introduce a sub-quota within the Scheduled Castes (SCs) reservations for the Madiga community in the southern state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and senior officials to form a committee to study the issue.
Telangana goes to the polls on November 30.
On November 11, at a public meeting organized by the Madiga Reserve Porata Samithi (MRPS), the Prime Minister was seen consoling Dalit leader Manda Krishna Madiga, who pointed out how the Malas, another SC community in Telangana, though numerically fewer, have cornered the population. benefits of SC reservation. At the meeting in Secunderabad, he promised to take steps to enable a sub-quota for Madigas within the SC reservation. It was a rare instance of the Prime Minister attending a meeting organized by one caste group.
On Friday, Home Minister Amit Shah, at a public meeting in Armoor, Nizamabad, reiterated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) promises that a backward caste leader would be appointed chief minister and a “vertical quota” would be fixed for the Madiga. community. The move is seen as the BJP’s response to the Congress’s support for the SCs by promising to increase the size of quota and caste enumeration. The BJP in Telangana has also promised to appoint an Other Backward Class (OBC) leader as the chief minister if it forms the government.
A seven-judge Constitution Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, will hear a matter related to sub-division of SC quota from mid-January 2024. The case concerns Punjab’s efforts to introduce sub-quotas within the SC reservation. Punjab has been trying to implement a sub-quota within the SC reservation since 2006.
There are some precedents for splitting SC reservations. In 2009, the Tamil Nadu government made special reservation for Arunthathiyars within the 18 percent reservation for SCs in the state. In 2007, Nitish Kumar’s government in Bihar created a category of ‘Mahadalits’, or the most backward Dalits, which excluded the Dhobi, Paswan, Dushad and Jatav castes. Later, it declared all SC castes, except Paswans, as Mahadalit. In 2020, Haryana bifurcated SC reservations into admissions by creating a ‘Deprived SC’ group, leaving out the Jatavs and Ravidasia communities. The UPA government’s Usha Mehta Committee in its 2008 report favored the categorization of SCs.