Context: Recently, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court reopened the legal debate on sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for reservations and on the other hand a Commission has been examining sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) for almost three years now.

• A commission headed by Justice (Retd.) G Rohini has been examining sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) for almost three years now.
• The issue of the sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for reservations is also in the highlights after the Supreme Court (SC) has referred it to a larger Bench.

Key Points
Sub-categorisation of OBCs

• OBCs are granted 27% reservation in jobs and education under the central government but only a few affluent communities among the over 2,600 included in the Central List of OBCs have secured a major part of this.
• Sub-categorisation or creating categories within OBCs for reservation would ensure “equitable distribution” of representation among all OBC communities.
• However, sub-categorisation can be used to appease one vote-bank or the other within the category and thus a cause of social justice would end up being politicised.
• The commission requested for an appropriate budget provision for a proposed all-India survey for an estimate of the caste-wise population of OBCs.
• The reason given was the absence of data for the population of various communities to compare with their representation in jobs and admissions as the data of the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) were not considered reliable.
• In August 2018, it was announced that the data of OBCs will also be collected in Census 2021 but there have been no other announcements after that.

Commission

• It took charge in October 2017 with a tenure of 12 weeks ending in January 2018. In June 2020, the Cabinet approved a six-month extension to the commission up to 31st January 2021.
• Progress: It is ready with the draft report and would have huge political consequences and is likely to face a judicial review as well.
• Budget: Until November 2019, the government has spent over Rs. 1.70 crore on the Commission including salary and other expenses.
• The budget is being drawn from the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) which was given constitutional status by the government in 2018.

Commission’s Terms of References

• To examine the uneven distribution of reservation benefits among different castes in the central OBC list.
• To work out the mechanism, criteria, norms and parameters in a scientific approach for sub-categorisation within such OBCs.
• To take up the exercise of identifying the respective castes/communities/sub-castes/synonyms for comprehensive data coverage.
• To study and recommend correction of any repetitions, ambiguities, inconsistencies and errors of spelling or transcription.

Findings So Far

According to the 2018 data analysis of 1.3 lakh central jobs and admissions to central higher education institutions given under OBC quota:

• 24.95% of these jobs and seats have gone to just 10 OBC communities.
• 97% of all jobs and educational seats have gone to just 25% of all sub-castes classified as OBCs.
• 983 OBC communities, 37% of the total, have zero representation in jobs and educational institutions.
• 994 OBC sub-castes have a total representation of only 2.68% in recruitment and admissions.
• According to the 2018-19 annual report of the Department of Personnel and Training, OBC recruitment in central jobs is considerably low.
• For example, there was not a single professor and associate professor appointed under the OBC quota in central universities.
• Posts reserved for them were being filled by people of general category as OBC candidates were declared ‘None Found Suitable’ (NFS).