The Bihar Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a bill to increase reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Extremely Backward Classes in state jobs and educational institutions to 65 per cent.
The second tranche of data from the Bihar government's caste-based survey - and the full report on the economic condition of 215 Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and Extremely Backward Classes - was published Tuesday.
An immediate reservation of one-third of the existing seats for women, is likely to benefit largely those women who already have the cultural and political capital to contest elections, and these are bound to be elite women. How else to understand the BJP’s determined opposition to the Mandal Commission reservations for OBCs and its equally fervent support for women’s reservations?
The caste survey was challenged under two significant grounds: that it violated a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy and that the state had no power to carry out such a survey.
Welcoming the release of the caste survey findings, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the exercise has proved that 84 per cent of people in Bihar are OBCs, SCs and STs and their share should be according to their population.