Karnataka government was discussing proposals to increase the reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) up to 35 or 36% for Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said on Friday.
Responding to queries, he said that based on existing laws the government need not provide 18% reservation for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST). “As per rules, reservation for local body elections is based on population,” he said, pointing out that SC/STs comprised only about 13% of Bengaluru’s population.
Due to this, there is a discussion to increase OBC reservation from 33% by a few percentage points.
“However, we are under pressure as there are requests that SC/ST population of the state (which is around 18%) should be considered for reservation (for BBMP polls). The government has to take a call on that,” the minister said.
On OBC reservation in other local bodies, Madhuswamy conceded that there was lot of confusion. If the Supreme Court had issued some guidelines on determining political backwardness, the government could have followed it. However, there are no specific parameters to determine it in front of the state or Centre, he said. In the past, the state government had used socio-economic and educational status data for political reservation. Now, unit-wise empirical data on political backwardness has to be submitted to Supreme Court to ensure reservation for the other backward classes, Madhuswamy said.