States using EWS quota to breach cap

NEW DELHI: In a direct fallout of upper caste reservations, states are using the Centre’s 10% EWS quota as cover to increase the quantum for backward classes beyond the 50% ceiling which they were unable to do earlier — a move that threatens to open the floodgates on total reservation possible and complicate the already nettlesome issue.

Rajasthan last month passed 10% EWS quota in the state and on Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh followed suit. In both states, the total reservation has touched a high 64% and 70% respectively.

States were expected to introduce quota for “the poor among upper castes” after the Centre’s landmark decision this January to introduce economic criteria for reservation in jobs and educational institutions through a constitutional amendment.

However, the crucial, and controversial, aspect of the Centre’s decision was to take reservation beyond 50% — a ceiling imposed by the Supreme Court. The government has defended it as legally sustainable by arguing that the halfway barrier on quotas was limited to “backward classes” while EWS quota is not on caste but on economic criteria.

Irrespective of the soundness of the defence, states have come to view the EWS quota as a convenient shield to do what was impossible earlier — take the OBC quota beyond 50%.

The modus operandi, as evidenced in MP and Rajasthan, is that states introduce EWS quota to “legally” take reservations beyond 50%. And alongside, they bring legislations to increase quota for SCs or STs or OBCs.

While Rajasthan did it to provide 5% quota for Gujjars, MP used the opportunity to hike its OBC quota from 14% to 27%.

It is now to be seen if more states would follow Rajasthan and MP, and hike ‘backward class’ quota under the cover of EWS. If the trend holds, the fear is that there would be no bar on total reservation.

There are sure to be complications ahead. With the clubbing of sorts of EWS and backward classes’s quota on the issue of breaching of 50% ceiling, any legal examination of one is likely to involve that of the other. It would not only open the viability of EWS quota to legal scrutiny but also pit the two quotas against each other.

Till now, such attempts automatically hit the judicial firewall — like Rajasthan’s post-2009 manoeuvres on Gujjar front, Maharashtra law on Marathas, Jats in Haryana and some of the other states. While the Centre has claimed that EWS quota is beyond the 50% ceiling, many view it as a politically difficult argument to make to stop the states from hiking SC/ST/ OBC reservation above the halfway mark. Also, no political party would be willing to lean on this logic which is sure to appease the upper castes but antagonise the “backward classes”.