Sub-quota, a politically-potent move with repercussions

The contentious sub-quota issue is back in focus after the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can make categories for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Socially and Backward Classes.

The politically-potent move will have its repercussions across the country when many sub-castes have raised the bogey of discrimination within the reserved categories, alleging that benefits of the quota are being sliced by somewhat developed and dominant groups in all the three categories.

The BJP-ruled Karnataka, which has now decided to explore the possibility of giving quota within quota to the further-deprived classes after the Supreme Court order, will be joining the list of several states, which have done so successfully without breaching the over-all mark of permissible 50% reservation.

JDU general secretary and former Rajya Sabha MP K C Tyagi, who has been closely associated with reservation issue, says though the move could kick in politics,
he does not find any reason to oppose it.

“The sub-quota system has already been implemented in many states like Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. In fact, it was Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur who had first pushed for quota within quota in 1978. The move does not lead to a breach of the 50% reservation ceiling put in by the Supreme Court in the judgement in the Mandal case (Indira Sawhney versus Union of India 1992),” Tyagi argued.

In Bihar, the aspirations of non-Paswan (Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s community), was given voice in the past by Nitish Kumar, who set up a Mahadalit Commission. Similarly, Kumar also set up a commission for Extremely Backward Classes.

With elections around the corner, the JDU leaders are burnishing and brandishing the ‘Atipichcha’ credentials of Kumar, recalling how the chief minister fulfilled the dreams of these communities ignited by Karpoori, who belonged to EBC barber community.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP’s rise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also due to the substantial chunks of non-Yadav backward castes and non-Jatav Dalits having backed it when the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party command the Yadav (OBC) and Jatav (SC) votes.

While the JD(U) is going to the towns in Bihar brandishing how Nitish Kumar took the reservation out of the clutches of few castes, the RJD, whose core base is of Yadavs, have preferred caution saying they would first like to have socio-economic caste census data before the implementation of any sub-quota. Though BJP has got good support from EBCs but it is worried over the focus on caste census, which could centralise the politics in Bihar as OBC versus others, which it may find difficult to deal with as the Opposition parties in Bihar and UP have stronger faces among backward classes.

In 2012, a massive row had kicked in UP over remarks of Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on minority sub-quota, drawing the ire of the Election Commission. The matter had also reached the Supreme Court.

Earlier, Andhra Pradesh High Court had quashed the decision for 4.5% sub-quota for minorities in the OBC category.

While the Supreme Court on Thursday referred the matter to a seven-member bench to take a final call on it, the issue has already caught up the imagination of politicians. Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Javed Raza advocates caution and feels that somebody may challenge the order of the apex court and file a plea against it.

“After all Mandal Commission that had provided 27% reservation to backward classes, had not opted for subcategorisation of OBCs,” he argues.