BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday termed the belated decision of Odisha government to enumerate socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs) as a dilatory step to deny reservations to other backward classes (OBCs).
Pradhan, who has been demanding reservations for OBCs in government jobs and educational institutions and for SEBCs in educational institutions for a long time, said the State government has done a great disservice to a vast majority of population in Odisha by depriving them of their constitutional rights for more than three decades.
“I had written to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik thrice requesting him to implement 27 per cent (pc) reservation for OBCs and SEBCs who constitute 54 pc of the total population of the State. My request has remained unaddressed till date,” Pradhan told a media conference in Delhi. While most of the states have implemented the 27 pc reservation in government services and educational institutions, Pradhan said some states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Bihar have raised the quota to a much higher percentage in accordance with the higher percentage of special categories in their population.
“The current move for enumeration of SEBCs comes across as a dichotomous and dilatory step trying to mask the extant policies of the State government denying reservations for OBCs and SEBCs categories,” he tweeted. There are more than 210 communities identified as SEBCs in Odisha. Most of them are suffering from the twin curses of poverty and illiteracy.
Even after 30 years of a provision for reservations under Article 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution for such communities, the government has not provided them justice under the plea that it has no sufficient data to quantify the OBCs and SEBCs, he said. “The government has access to its own SEBC list as well as OBC list of the Centre, which can be used for providing appropriate reservations in the field of education and employment,” he said.
Though the Naveen Patnaik government had introduced 27 pc reservation on the eve of the 2009 General Elections and later enacted the Orissa Reservation of Posts and Services (for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes) Act, 2008, the same was struck down by the Orissa High Court. The government had to reduce the SEBC quota from 27 to 11.25 pc to maintain the Supreme Court ceiling of 50 per cent.