The Odisha government on Wednesday constituted Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes (OSCBC) under the chairmanship of Justice Raghunath Biswal, former judge of the Orissa High Court.
The other members of the Commission are Navneeta Rath, Mitali Chinara and Prasanna Kumar Patra.
Veer Vikram Yadav, IAS, has been nominated as Member Secretary of the Commission.
The State government constituted the Commission in accordance with the provisions contained in the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993, according to the CMO.
Justice Biswal had also served as president of the Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission from November 2012 to March 2017.
Prof. Rath is a distinguished social scientist who has conducted studies on backward classes, while Prof. Chinara is well known in the field of applied and analytical economics, and Dr. Patra is a renowned anthropologist.
Waking up to the need to protect the interests of backward classes, the Odisha Cabinet had recently resolved that a socio-economic caste survey be conducted simultaneously along with the general census, either by inserting a suitable column in the census format or by prescribing a separate format for a simultaneous enumeration of socially and educationally backward classes and other backward classes/castes.