Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill: Challenging Supreme Court Limits

Context:

• The Bihar Assembly unanimously passed  Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill, to increase reservation for Backward Classes, Extremely Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes from the existing 50% to 65%. 

Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill – To Increase Reservation Quota Beyond Supreme Court Limit

• Together with the 10% Economically Backward Class (EWS) quota, the Bill will push reservation in Bihar to 75%, well past the 50% ceiling set by the Supreme Court.
• Bills providing for the same increase in reservation in educational institutions and government jobs, which were drafted based on the caste survey conducted by the State government recently, too were passed unanimously through voice vote in the Assembly.
• After the release of Caste Based Survey 2022, the state government has decided to increase the reservation quota for SCs, STs, EBCs and Backward Castes in government jobs in proportion to the increase of their population.

Key Provisions of  Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill:

• According to the legislation, named the Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill, quota for Extremely Backward Class (EBC) will be raised from the existing 18% to 25%; for Backward Class (BC) from 12% to 18%; for Scheduled Caste (SC) from 16% to 20%; and for Scheduled Tribe (ST), the quota will be doubled, from 1% to 2%. 
• The existing 3% reservation for BC women has been scrapped.
• The 10 per cent EWS quota has been earmarked for the poor among the general category and it has not changed. The total quota limit will be effectively up to 75 per cent now and  25 per cent will remain unreserved.
• The pattern for reservation quota has been fixed as per reservation in government jobs for these castes.

Concern regarding Bihar Reservation Amendment Bill:

• The proposal to hike reservation benefits may well end up before the courts since it breaches the 50% ceiling fixed by the Supreme Court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney (famously known as Mandal Commission) case.

News Source: The Hindu

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