Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Quota within Quota
Mains level: Making reservation system more efficient
The Haryana Assembly last week passed a Bill to split the 20% quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the state’s higher educational institutions into two, creating a quota within the quota for a new group of “Deprived Scheduled Castes”.
Deprived Scheduled Castes
- This category has 36 communities including Valmiki, Bazigar, Sansi, Deha, Dhanak, and Sapera.
What does the new law say?
- Fifty per cent of the 20 per cent seats reserved for SCs for admission in any Government educational institution shall be set aside for candidates belonging to DSCs.
- Where a seat set aside for candidate from deprived Scheduled Castes is not filled up in any academic year due to non-availability of such candidate; it shall be made available to candidate of Scheduled Castes.
Constitutional Provisions incited
- Article 15(5) of the Constitution authorizes the State to make special provisions for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for SCs/STs for admission to educational institutions.
- However Article 15(5) did not mention powers to bifurcate the quota.
Is this sub-quota a new idea?
- The present Haryana government has replicated the initiative of the state government in 1994.
- Then government bifurcated the Scheduled Caste quota into two categories: Block A and Block B.
Why such move?
- The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Act says that the representation of the SCs now categorised as DSCs” is “only 4.7%, 4.14% and 6.27% in Group A, Group B and Group C services respectively, even though their population is about 11% of the total State population.
- The population of other SCs in Haryana is also about 11% of the total State population but in respect of representation in Government Services their share is 11%, 11.31% and 11.8% in Group A, B and C, respectively.”
- The reason for the poor representation of the DSCs in government jobs can be found in their educational qualifications.
- Thus, even though the “minimum prescribed educational qualification for majority of the posts of Group A, B & C services… is Graduation, the Socio-Economic Caste Census data reveals that in terms of education.
- Only 3.53% population of the DSCs is Graduate, 3.75% of them are Senior Secondary level and 6.63% are Matric/Secondary level. Also 46.75% of them are illiterate.
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