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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