Karnataka Assembly passes SC/ST quota hike bill

Belagavi, Dec 26 :Karnataka Assembly on Monday passed a bill to hike the reservation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. There, however, are some legal hurdles to be crossed, and to tide them over, the state government will approach the central government to include a new law in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution. Welcoming the bill, LoP Siddaramaiah said its provisions breach the Supreme Court’s 50 per cent cap on quotas, “therefore the central government must include it in the 9th schedule of the Constitution.”
Congress MLA Krishna Byre Gowda raised doubts over the commitment of the central government because it had denied any increase in reservation. “All that we want is that the central government should make an affirmative statement about the bill,” he said. Siddaramaiah also agreed with JDS members’ demand for reservations in the private sector. “There are about 60,000 lakh central and state jobs vacant. This will make a difference if reservation is implemented in the private sector,” he said. Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister JC Madhuswamy assured to take this matter to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
In March 2021, the BJP government under BS Yediyurappa set up a committee headed by retired high court judge Subhash B Adi to study the demands for changes in the reservation matrix. The committee gave its report on July 6 and cited a study by Bengaluru’s National Law School of India University, which stated that 74 per cent of tribal communities had remained invisible and that their literacy rates were lower than 3 per cent. Prior to it, a committee headed by Justice Nagamohandas was formed in 2019 following an order passed by Karnataka High Court to study the conditions of the SCs and STs in the state.
Its report, submitted in July 2020, said there was evidence of social and educational backwardness among the communities. Such backwardness was much starker in populations living in the far-flung areas in the Western Ghats and in the drier regions of the state, the report said, adding that people there were unable to get the benefits of reservation.