HYDERABAD:Granting Constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) will enable it to address complaints of non-implementation of reservation for BCs, members of the Commission have opined.
Referring to the long-pending demand that the Commission be given Constitutional powers, NCBC Chairman Justice V Eswaraiah told reporters here Saturday that the issue was under the active consideration of the Union government and hoped it would be granted soon. In wake of the bifurcation of erstwhile united AP into Telangana and AP, the Commission held a public hearing in Hyderabad and Vijayawada, for three and two days respectively last week to elicit the views of different communities for preparing separate Central OBC lists for both the states. This would take a month, the chairman informed.
Lack of a redressal mechanism with the NCBC to monitor implementation of 27 per cent quota for OBCs, in both educational and employment opportunities, had resulted in poor implementation of the reservations. “In some cases, not even 12 per cent has been implemented. To check this anomaly, the Commission has passed resolutions urging the government to give us Constitutional powers,” he said. With a view to extend support to “most-depressed classes” like transgenders and orphans, he said individuals and organisations should come forward to represent their case with the Commission as the latter can act only in case of such representations.
While appreciating the efforts of the Telangana government for conducting comprehensive household survey, in August 2014, he appealed to the State government to make the data public. He said the data would be useful in filling up jobs as per the reservation norms.
He saw the need for political reservations for uplifting the backward classes and appealed to the political parties to raise the issue in Parliament.